{"id":1791,"date":"2011-06-06T18:46:46","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T09:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2011-06-06\/1791"},"modified":"2011-06-07T00:28:04","modified_gmt":"2011-06-06T15:28:04","slug":"a-good-day-courtsey-of-suntory-and-a-cute-cardiologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2011-06-06\/1791","title":{"rendered":"A Good Day, Courtesy of Suntory and a Cute Cardiologist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\nNOTE<\/b>: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I had the most pleasant hospital experience today. (That's not something you hear often!)<\/p>\n\n

For the last 15 years of so I've had occasional bouts of atrial\nfibrillation (a not<\/span>-particularly-dangerous arrhythmia, or “irregular\nheartbeat”), where my heart suddenly can't keep a steady<\/span> rhythm. In older<\/span> folks it's often accompanied by tachycardia (“super-fast heartbeat”) which\nis bad, but I've never had that problem, so my A-fib is not directly\ndangerous. However, if left untreated for more than a day<\/span> or two, the\nirregular flow of blood through the heart could allow clots to form, which\nare directly dangerous, so when it starts (and no one knows what sets it\noff), I take an<\/span> aspirin to thin the blood, and look to correcting it.<\/p>\n\n

When I lived in The States, “correcting it” involved being put under\nwith a general<\/span> anesthesia, having electrodes attached to my chest with\nridiculously-strong adhesive pads, then receiving two well manicured\nelectrical shocks in quick succession, one to stop the heart and another to\nrestart it, hopefully with a good<\/span> rhythm.<\/p>\n\n

The worst part of this experience was the removal of the electrode pads,\nbecause they would take a few<\/span> layers of skin with them, so I got<\/span> into the\nhabit of asking that they be removed while I was<\/span> still under.<\/p>\n\n

Anyway, the first time this happened after moving to Japan, it was late\non a weekend,<\/span> so they did the shock thing in the ER, but later the\ncardiologist suggested I try<\/span> the drug “Sunrythm”\n\n (\u30b5\u30f3\u30ea\u30ba\u30e0,<\/span>\npilsicainide hydrochloride<\/i><\/a>)\nthe next time it happened. “Rhythm” in the name, of course,\ncomes from the regular heartbeat it tries to restore, with\n“Sun” coming from the company that developed it,\n“Suntory”, which tends to be more famous for its beer and\nwhiskey production.<\/p>\n\n

It worked well every time since, until today when it didn't correct the\nproblem that started yesterday morning, so I went<\/span> to the Kyoto Prefectural\nTeaching Hospital here in town, expecting the many-hours wait that always\naccompanies a visit<\/span> to a clinic<\/span> or hospital. I got there<\/span> at 8:50am and was\ntalking to a doctor<\/span> by 10:00. Wow, that was fast (made faster by Bill\nBryson's At Home<\/i> on my iPad's Kindle app<\/a>, courtesy of a\ngift<\/span> from my mom).<\/p>\n\n

An hour later I'd had an EKG done and was chatting with a cardiologist.<\/span> He suggested<\/span> that they should do the shock thing, since it had been more\nthan a day<\/span> since the arrhythmia had started. That was fine with me, but I suggested<\/span>\nthat we try the Sunrythm again, since it turns out that the stuff I'd been\ntaking had long expired, so maybe a quick<\/span> shot of the good stuff would do\nthe trick.<\/p>\n\n

So, half an hour later (11:30) I was<\/span> on a bed,<\/span> still reading my Kindle,\nwith an IV drip of Sunrythm, being attended by an incredibly cute\ncardiologist whose attractiveness did nothing to help steady my heart. We waited<\/span> a while<\/span> to let the Sunrythm work, but it didn't, so at 1:04 she gave\nme an injection of 1% Propofol<\/a>, a short<\/span>-term\ngeneral anesthesia to put me under.<\/p>\n\n

At least it was supposed to.<\/p>\n\n

She said that it would be painful around the arm where it went in, but\nit wasn't. Rather, I felt it<\/span> first in my chest as an odd (but not\nunpleasant) sensation, then I noticed<\/span> my vision start to blur. I was giving<\/span>\nthem (the cute cardiologist had been joined by another cardiologist and\ntwo nurses) a running<\/span> commentary of the effects, but after the vision\nstarted to blur, the progression stopped and I remained<\/span> in a\nsomewhat<\/span>-blurry-vision not-unpleasant limbo. After a short<\/span> while I\ncommented<\/span> to the nurse that it had stopped progressing at blurry vision,\nand then a minute<\/span> or so later I noticed<\/span> that the heart monitor's beeping\nhad become regular, so it seems that the Sunrythm did kick in, just in the\nnick of time. The whole<\/span> shock thing wouldn't be needed.<\/p>\n\n

I pointed out the steady rhythm to the nurse, who then commented “yeah, because we shocked you”.<\/p>\n\n

Doh! I had one<\/span> continuous three-minute memory of what turned out to be a 20<\/span>-minute span.<\/p>\n\n

I asked whether I'd said anything while I was<\/span> under, and apparently I\nsaid<\/span> “Ouch” once (probably when they were taking the shock pads off my\nchest). It turns<\/span> out that I said<\/span> it in Japanese, which both surprises and\ndelights me.<\/p>\n\n

Anyway, half an hour later I was waiting in line to pay the bill. With\nthe socialist insurance over here, the bill was 19,140 yen, about US $240.<\/p>\n\n

I had expected a long day of waiting and inaction, but things moved along quickly,\nthe doc was cute, and oh yeah, I didn't<\/span> die. All and all<\/span>, a good<\/span> experience.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had the most pleasant hospital experience today. (That's not something you hear often!)<\/p>

For the last 15 years of so I've had occasional bouts of atrial fibrillation (a not-particularly-dangerous arrhythmia, or \"irregular heartbeat\"), where my heart suddenly can't keep a steady rhythm. In older folks it's often accompanied by tachycardia (\"super-fast heartbeat\") which is bad, but I've never had that problem, so my A-fib is not directly dangerous. However, if left untreated for more than a day or two, the irregular flow of blood through the heart could allow clots to form, which are directly dangerous, so when it [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}