Kokoro (heart)

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My heart bangs, strong, constant, incessant, with weight, like if he was a giant caught inside of me trying to break up my body and be free.
He makes me shake from top to bottom, I feel every pulse everywhere in the back of my body, my clothes and sheets tremble to the compass of his rhythm. I hear him in my head and in my ears. Sometimes it relaxes me and take me to the dream, and sometimes it’s so intense that he produce me the opposite effect.

My heart so many times doesn’t do pumpum… rather he does  paparapapa, Safri Dúo’s style XD. Hear him and “touch him” (oh yeah, touch him, he’s so brute that I can touch him) in those moments it could be scary because you know that this rhythm isn’t natural and the first word you think is “Arrhythmia?”.  I downplay it thinking that if it was this I’d be having a bit of funk. ERROR! The reality is that I’m having heeve jeeves everywhere, everyday and this is one more between everything else (and that I’ll be writing them).

Sometimes when my heart is in heavy metal’s drummer phase it starts making me feel pins and needles that go from most to least intensity and from most to least duration.  How hurt this fucked punches! Other times I simply feel like a burst of speed followed by something like an air’s bubble. I notice like a “pop”  and feel a kind of  a little suffocation that forces me to give a very strange cough to unblock. Super strange and super scary too.

Kokoro-san giving everything! 

Those punches and irregular rhythms of my heart were one of the first big symptoms that I had when I was a child, I don’t know if it was weeks or months  after being bitten. Before it already I had the first typical symptoms of the Lyme’s infection, fatigue and cold sensation when  bite’s erythema appears, and I haven’t given up them in my whole life.  I was coming to the doctor to check out and search for tachycardia, what finally is a kind of arrhythmia (heart’s pumping’s rhythms disproportions).  However, I was never diagnosed of tachycardia because of when I went to the doctor I wasn’t passing the episodes of punches and disproportions beats and therefore they didn’t appear on the test results…¬______¬ in short.

And everybody said to me “you are so nervous, you are sensible, relax yourself”… an I answered them, “but if I wasn´t nervous and it punched me!” Finally, I learned to suffer it in silence…ahem, why not, finally the lymers always just suffer in silence, like people in hemorrhoids commercials! Maybe it’s because we (lymers) “get used to our symptoms and we naturalize them”…another ERROR!

Who was going to tell us to my family and to me, that all those sensations weren’t nervous or a damn or bloody anything else, that they were little bugs having fun, dancing flamenco with stiletto heel on the love’s muscle.

This fact is calling Lyme Carditis.
And, what is carditis? Well, It’s the heart’s inflammation provoked by some kind of virus, bacteria, parasite or fungus infection.
And how it works? Well,  the Borrelia Burgdorferi, the bacteria who provoked Lyme disease, settles in the heart’s tissues hurt them, inflamed them and collapsed the right function of the heart.

It’s supposed  that when the infection is eliminated, the heart recovers and stop to give signals of arrhythmia and tachycardias. However, when Lyme take so much time in the body, like in my case, it’s possible that the organ remains with sequels.

Luckily in my case it’s never gone beyond since I could be more serious complications. I hope that this continue being like that now that I’m in treatment and the infection must be controlled.

The Lyme Carditis existence’s knowing is so young, maybe it has a year, and is in the two last months when I see more articles movements where they are accepting that this problem is one complication more of the Lyme disease. While, in first place it’s belived that the rate of Lyme patients who suffers cardits is minimal, the reality is that everyday I hear more people’s voices  who are affected by this problem in our ‘sector’.

I let you here an  “Everyday Health”  article’s fragment write by the cardiologist T. Jared Bunch, MD

"...

Lyme carditis and your heart

The early symptoms of Lyme disease that involve the heart can occur as soon as one week after a deer tick bite.

Lyme carditis symptoms include:

-Palpitations

-Chest pain

-Dizziness

-Passing out

As heart disease from a Lyme infection becomes chronic, a few problems may arise. Some people develop chronic inflammation of the pericardium, the sack around the heart. This can cause sharp chest pain that increases with deep breaths or lying down, compared to sitting up. Over time the pericardium can thicken and adhere to the heart muscle. This can cause swelling in the lower extremities, abdomen, and sometimes lightheadedness, shortness of breath, and exercise intolerance.

The most common chronic heart problem from Lyme disease is a conduction system abnormality. The electrical system of the heart normally generates a heartbeat in the right upper chamber then transfers it through specialized tissues to the lower heart chambers. When heart muscle is electrically stimulated, it contracts, or squeezes.

In people who develop Lyme carditis, 87 percent have some degree of electrical heart block, typically in the area of the heart that conducts electricity from the upper to the lower heart chambers (called the AV node).

In half of the these patients, the block can be severe and cause a very slow heart rate that puts them at risk for passing out, dizziness, chest pain, and shortness of breath. With early recognition of the problem and IV antibiotic treatment, the heart block often improves and few people require pacemakers.

Finally, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease can also invade and inflame the heart muscle, a syndrome call myocarditis. This can lead to muscle weakening and abnormally fast heart rhythms.

..."

Full article here

Arrhythmias, tachycardias, carditis or miocarditis, what it’s clear is that  it’s now when I understand what happened in my heart, after so many years, after of those first episodes when I was a child  and terror paralyzed me when I felt those punches trespassing my chest and my heart beating in crazy and disproportional rhythms. It’s now when I don’t feel guilt when I have to spending a time where my kokoro-san dosn’t know properly in what rhythm play the drums and become a bit crazy.

Now, maybe like always but more conscious  of the reality,  I put my hand on my chest and I speak with my heart from deep inside of me. I tell him “Please, continue being so strong, continue resisting like since now, we went through by the worst moments, already there is less path to finish. Continue with me until the end. Thanks for never giving up.”

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