If you’ve ever experienced the sensation of your heart beating really fast for a second or two after which the feeling goes away? it is usually no big deal, because normally, a person’s heart beat goes unnoticed. However, if your heart is fluttering or racing for an extended period of time and you begin to feel dizzy, as if you are going to pass out-that is a very big deal. Your heart could be out of its natural rhythm and, depending on the problem, if it is not discovered and corrected in time – could be life-threatening. At a softball game last spring in a Webster Groves, Missouri park, Redditt
Hudson was talking to a friend as he walked toward his family to watch his daughter’s softball game. At the end of the conversation, his heart started to race, as it had done off and on over the years. But this time it was no passing matter.
“I had just kind of gotten used to it and it would pass. And what I would do if it started to race on me like that, I would cough-and it would just kind of re-regulate itself,” Hudson said. “This time when it started racing on me, I coughed and it just felt like it stopped altogether – I just felt it shut down.”
He hadn’t experienced that feeling before and Hudson couldn’t catch his breath either. His instinct sent him running uphill to his family.
My daughter had a water bottle and I had on a T-shirt and I ripped it off and I dumped the whole bottle of water over my head, thinking that maybe I could shock my system,” Hudson said.
Nothing happened.
“And I felt like – the sensation was one of leaving. It just felt like I was going away. I felt weaker and weaker and I still couldn’t get my next breath – struggling to breathe – struggling to speak,” he said. “I just remember having that thought. ‘Damn. There is still a lot of stuff that I wanted to do. I’ve still got a lot of work I want to do in the community – things that I had hoped to achieve personally for my family and for my community. Damn man, why are you cutting me off now?'”Hudson thought he may have been having a heart attack and if he was going to die, he didn’t want to do it in front of his wife and daughters.
“So I started trying to go up these steps that I thought might get me out of their view, but I couldn’t. I didn’t make it. I collapsed on the steps and I heard someone say ‘Call 9-1-1′,” Hudson said.
The ambulance responded.
“I still had some awareness but I still couldn’t speak or explain. People were asking me what was going on and I could see the alarm in the faces of them looking at me,” he called.
He was observed and stabilized at an area hospital and was put on a heart monitor to wear 24-hours a day except when showering. The monitor sends readings to a central information center for his doctor to determine what was causing the frightening episodes.
