Palpitations from the morning, on my way home I could feel my heart speed up. It now varied from +30 to +50 above normal speed. (I just came home from work, and put the pulse watch on.) Temperature around 37.5C  (99.5F), the same that made the doctor diagnose influenza when I was in the emergency room a week and a half ago. Obviously I don’t have an influenza that comes and goes. That’s not how influenza works. So all we know is that I have SOMETHING, which makes my heart race and my temperature rise, but we don’t know what.

I called the ER again. They said I could come there in half an hour. But I had a pulse of 150 just standing up. I felt like I was going into shock here. I was not sure I could go that distance unless I got so much better I no longer needed to. Still, when the time approached, I trudged off. Interestingly, my pulse was only a little higher while walking than when standing or sitting. It seems the speed of my heart comes from something else than the muscles needing oxygen. But I don’t know what.

The wait was less this time, and the doctor spoke Norwegian.  She hooked me up to the EKG machine again. I was half sitting instead of lying flat, but the readings were pretty much exactly the same. When sitting normally or walking, my heart does double beats quite a lot today, and has done since the morning. That did not show on the EKG at all. But she could eliminate some dangerous conditions simply from the shape of the graph, which she pointed out for me. So as far as the heart was concerned, there was no need to do anything tonight. She still had no idea what it could be. Not influenza this time. She said it was not sepsis, she had seen patients with that and I did not look the part. (I agree. I mentioned it because of the tooth, mainly.) Besides it is not something that comes and goes. My blood pressure was higher this time, but again not dangerous. (I had been more worried that it would be too low, actually – I felt weak, as if I had somehow lost pressure.)

The ER doctor gave me printouts of both of the recordings (from today and 11 days ago) and a letter to my regular doctor. I could not remember his name, still can’t. So it’s been a while. ^_^ She advised me to call him tomorrow and try to get an appointment this week, for blood tests and to apply for a portable EKG to catch the arrhythmia while I am exercising. (Or just sitting, in today’s case.)

I am pretty sure it is not a mental thing, since I did not panic until after about half an hour. (Same as last time, more or less.) It is first when I continue getting worse and worse for a while that I feel fear. I am a bit ashamed for being afraid of death, but it really is something I think any mammal would feel when the body inches closer to shock.

I am still a bit shaken (and my pulse is still 90-100 instead of 60-70). I appreciate any prayers for my soul. Well, as long as they don’t imply me going to Valhalla or some such.

It feels kind of bizarre to be held prisoner by a “fever” of barely one degree Fahrenheit (or a little past half a degree Celsius). The truth is that if the doctor had not mentioned it, I would not have thought of it. For all I know I may have had this for a couple days before the sudden illness too. I would never have noticed. I am more stiff and sore than usual, but I am sometimes stiff and sore. I don’t normally measure my temperature unless I feel worse than I do now.

Yesterday I took a walk for half an hour or so. My pulse stayed comfortable the whole trip, rarely ever getting up to 110. But boy was I stiff and sore afterwards, as if I had walked for two hours carrying various stuff. So there really is something weird going on, whether it is a flu or not.

Today I went to work. There was a big upgrade this weekend and the boss’ boss wanted as many as possible in tech support from the morning. Since I was neither sneezing nor dripping, I assumed I could avoid infecting others if I cleaned my hands regularly with alcoholic disinfectant. This went well enough. But I still have that slightly higher temperature when I came home, I am still more stiff than usual, have a shade of a headache and now my nose is actually getting stuffy. If I get a head cold while I have the flu, I should probably stay home to not infect more people. Old people take that bus. I don’t want to hasten their demise! But for now I am just a little bit more human than usual. I could stay like this for the next 30 years and not complain, if there was only me to be concerned about.

Today I had one of my rare visits to the emergency room. It started while I was talking the walk after coming home from work. After around 10 minutes, I started feeling a “ring of pain” circling both my stomach and back when I breathed in deeply. Only then, but it was quite pronounced and unlike any pattern of pain I could remember from before. Well, I turned around and started going home, but on my way home my pulse began to increase. It had been low as usual when I started, but got higher and higher and soon approached max pulse, even though I was walking leisurely. When I stopped at the supermarket, it slowed down a bit, but still too high. I called the emergency number, and they put me in contact with the emergency room here in Mandal. At this point, my pulse was lower, although still above normal, so I said I would walk over there.

I did walk there, but my pulse was in the 150s or above much of the way, which cannot possibly be a good thing when I have a resting pulse of 50. By the time I arrived, I felt pretty bad. I was shaking, my hands were icy cold, and my pulse was still racing. I waited like this for a while.  Then I was let into a room and a nurse measured my blood pressure. This did not scare her, although I have no idea what the numbers meant. She took a small blood test to rule out sepsis, I think. It was fine too. This was good, I must admit that had been one of my worries. I still have that tooth abscess after all. If that emptied into the blood, bad things might happen.

After sitting for a while, I got worse again. Shaking intensified, pulse rose, despite sitting in my outer jacket with a quilt over me I was still cold. I was taken to another room where they took an EKG. This showed what I already knew, that the pulse was abnormally high, but they found no other irregularities in it. (For some reason, the palpitations only happen when my pulse is below 120. Thank goodness for that.) So my heart got a clean bill of health again. It is indeed a remarkable heart: Its resting pulse is lower and the max pulse is higher than for healthy men my age. When it doesn’t have one of its irregular days, it is the envy of the neighborhood.

The doctor was Danish. They understand Norwegian easily, since our Book Language is basically Danish with a Norwegian pronunciation. (It is a heritage from when Norway was a Danish province, up until 1814.) It is much harder for us to understand Danish. Those on the south coast have a much easier time with it, the dialect here is closer to Danish and there has been regular contact across the strait here for centuries and still is. But I had a hard time understanding her and sometimes had to shift to English. Ironically, their English pronunciation is only marginally worse than ours.

Every time we conversed, I began shaking. She thought this was because I was scared by the things we talked about, but it happened even when I did not understand her. The real explanation was probably that I could not meditate and understand Danish at the same time, and it was my meditation that kept the shivering at bay the rest of the time. I meditated continuously when not talking, although it was not a deep meditation due to the circumstances.

I was also getting a very slight fever, which increased a little eventually. Judging from this and the available data, the doctor decided it was probably the flu, which is raging around here right now. I have had the flu every few years but never had symptoms like these, but she claims it happens occasionally. Since I later got a faint headache, she may well be right.

I also asked them to measure my blood sugar. It was 7.1 mmol (the European unit of measurement, I believe it corresponds to 160 in the units of Differentland) which is well into the pre-diabetes range. That crushes my hypothesis that strange behavior of my heart comes from having lower glucose levels than it has grown accustomed to. (It was in normal human levels last summer when it last went to full speed.)

In any case, my survival several hours later implies that no internal organs have ruptured, and anything less should probably succumb to sleep, meditation and chicken soup. So I walked home when the original symptoms had disappeared. The ring of pain seems to be gone, the frost and shaking are gone, the pulse is down to about 30 beats above the normal, which is what one would expect from the body battling a virus. So I am cautiously optimistic.

I felt a bit guilty about going to the ER once I realized that it might be just the flu. But providence assuaged my guilt by letting me overhear another person contacting the ER after me. Their emergency was head lice, and they knew it. Your emergency may vary!

For the last three days, my heartbeat has been a bit strange. I am not sure it is actually irregular, it is more like it is beating harder than usual, but no faster, and kind of “hollow” as if it doesn’t quite get the usual traction. I have this or a very similar feeling when my blood pressure is falling, but I can’t say I notice any of that.

I am feeling fine generally. But maybe I can find a pattern in it later, if there is an opportunity later. I have learned quite a bit from my health whines over the past 12 years, although I don’t think anyone else has benefited from them!