“…my heart races so fast I can hardly bear it.” Evidently this is a familiar problem for young people. Somehow most of them survive. So did I, although with less margin.

This is quite possibly the worst tachycardia (racing heart) episode I’ve had yet, and I brought it upon myself. The Light warned me already the day before, repeatedly, but I joked it away. That may sound like a weird thing to do, but I just did not want to listen. When I get an idea in my head, I can be stubborn as a mule.

In my fictional Lightwielder universe, there is a saying so common among the Servants of the Light that they can say it without thinking: “The Light informs, warns, protects and heals.” Of course, that is a fictional world, but loosely based on my own experience and that of others, just transposed into a more literal or physical form. Yesterday, and today, the warning was unsettling in its clarity. But I decided to take the chance, thinking perhaps that the Light would protect me when it could no longer warn me. That’s not exactly how it went. Or perhaps it did, but not as much as I had anticipated.

My pulse was over 200 at the highest … 204 or 205 according to my pulse watch. That should not even be physically possible at my age. The rule of thumb is  220-(age), so in my case 165. That’s pretty close to what the cardiologist found on the bike test last year. So basically my heart was not entirely beating in the ordinary sense, but starting to fibrillate – the final stage before it stops, although people can endure various degrees of this for various lengths of time. A young friend of mine who was born with a reversal of the heart chambers sometimes had a pulse of 400, if I remember correctly. Eventually he died from it, in his teens. But it is a lot more than me, so, who knows what I may or may not survive.

I’d like it to not become a habit though. That probably means I shall have to listen to the Light before things get out of hand like that. I’m just not a very good Servant of the Light in real life, I’m afraid. But that which does not kill us makes us scared, so that is a step in the right direction.

The main attack lasted for about 5 hours, but it was above max pulse only when I walked. Perhaps I should just not do that. Or perhaps I should not take stupid pointless risks to my body and soul in the first place.