I have tachycardia, which, directly translated, means fast beating heart. Usually the episodes last for around 10 minutes and my heart beats over 200 beats/min.

I had an episode recently, while I was on Coumadin and it hurt like all heck so I went to a cardiologist to see if my thin blood could be contributing to this issue.

Cardiologist did not like that I had chest pain and my heart is beating faster than 180 bpm. He thinks that it is a fatal type of tachycardia and needs further tests to diagnose this.

As I was speaking to him, I mentioned that a previous cardiologist (prior to stroke) said that one way to stop the tachycardia is to 'bear down' to put pressure on the vagus nerve to stop it. I told him that at the end of Sept 2005, I had a tachycardia problem and really 'bore down' hard to try to stop it - my heart was beating at 240 bpm (I had an exercise heart monitor on). He said that most likely, the effort of exessive bearing down caused the dissection in the carotid artery and caused the stroke.

Great - I caused my own stroke...

So now, I have to go in for a stress test tomorrow (2 1/2 hours..ugh!), and an EP study in which they insert a catheter through a vein in my groin and map out the electrical circuit of my heart to make an accurate diagnosis and then have heart surgery to correct it.

Frankly, this is freaking me out a little & ticked me off too - I had been informed of the surgery 2 years ago and if I had done it then, I probably would not have had the stroke. :Tantrum: