However, we only made it half a block. Driving down the street I felt lightheaded for a second, thought I could shake it off, but the next thing I knew I was waking up from a blackout.
Several days later I now know that the lightheaded feeling was a sign my heart rate had dropped so low my brain was not getting enough oxygen and it shut me down. This unfortunately led to my now driverless car drifting into a neighbors driveway and clobbering their parked car. It was a small Honda and although my full sized Toyota truck can be as good as new with a new $200 bumper, the car may be totaled.
Since I can apparently black out with little warning now, the doctors told me not to drive until we can figure out what is going on.
A weekend of being hooked up to EKG monitoring didn't reveal anything, except that like many athletic people I have a low resting heart rate. An echocardiogram thankfully also showed nothing remarkable. 47,000 blood samples didn't show anything wrong.
When I first was admitted they stuck an IV hookup in me just in case they needed to use it later in a hurry. Maybe it was the insertion, maybe it was me moving my arm too much with it in there for 3 days, but I think it bothered the median nerve that runs along the inner part of your forearm. Like so:
My thumb, forefinger and middle finger are a bit tingly. Have tweaked other nerves before and had similar feeling. Have had worse and it got better, so it doesn't worry me much.
Stress testing later in the week to help try and pinpoint the cause of what may be allowing my heart to beat too slowly sometimes. Too bad it doesn't include VO2 testing because I'd actually like to do that. At least the cardiologist approved of the level of exercise I try and keep up as a healthy thing and not something to avoid.
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