PATRICE'S PERSPECTIVE
By Patrice Bumstead
General Manager of McKenzie County Media LLC
Farmer Editor
Hello friends, this week I wanted to share with you a personal experience my husband and I had recently. Brace yourselves, I am going to talk about how much I like our local healthcare. Which leads me to ask myself, why is it people in general are so quick to embrace the negative things they see on social media, but hesitant to share any good experiences? I digress.
Getting back to my story, over the past couple of years my husband has landed in the ER countless times for a pain in the middle of his chest coupled with a heart rate rockin’ in the mid-40s (crazy right?). We’ve been to healthcare facilities in Williston, Dickinson, Bismarck and right here at home. Last year we spent a week in the hospital down in Bismarck, while specialists ran test after test to see what was wrong. What we figured out then, was that he was having episodes of Bradycardia (low heart rate), but none of the tests done could tell us what was causing these sporadic episodes he was having, or how we could manage it.
So, he was put on blood pressure medicine, the doctors increased his heartburn medicine and basically sent us on our way to navigate a source of relief on our own. It’s important to know that my husband doesn’t like hospitals in general, well, no, more like he doesn’t like being a patient. However, this plan did not leave him with a better outlook on future healthcare visits.
When I tell you we have tried just about every holistic approach to solving the mystery pain that causes his heart rate to drop, I am not exaggerating. At first, peppermint seemed to aide in relief, so when he’d start to feel the pain coming on he would eat mints, put a cold rag on his head to mitigate the sweating and body tremors that appeared out of nowhere and I would check his blood pressure and heart rate every five minutes, until eventually he was back in normal heartbeat range.