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Last year my heart's AV nerves progressively stopped working, causing my ventricles to slow and decouple from my sinus node. Before figuring that out, I was get
by sgtnoodle 6y ago
Last year my heart's AV nerves progressively stopped working, causing my ventricles to slow and decouple from my sinus node. Before figuring that out, I was getting panic attacks from relatively benign technical disagreements with coworkers. It was very much a visceral fight-or-flight response. A few days before I ended up in the hospital, I tried playing a level of Tomb Raider and 5 minutes in I had a notable feeling of dread from it, like I was going to vomit and lose consciousness. Good times!
- XargonEnder 6y agoCan you elaborate on your hearts AV nerves? I don't really get it, but I sometimes wonder if my vagus nerve is damaged and your situation has some familiarity to me.
- sgtnoodle 6y agoSure. There was inflammation on my heart around those nerves, causing them to cease working. There are three nerves there, that propagate the impulse from your atriums to your ventricles in a controlled manner. When those nerves don't work, some of the impulse still indirectly makes it to the ventricles through the muscle tissue, but it's significantly delayed. So the ventricles beat, but at a significantly slower rate. It seemed to go 2:1 then 3:1, and even 4:1 at times. I had to get a pacemaker to solve the immediate issue of my heart not beating normally. With the inflammation taken care of a few months later, my nerves eventually started working again and my heart beats normally enough. They aren't 100%, but they're probably good enough that the pacemaker isn't necessary anymore.