My heart pounds. I can feel it hammering in my chest. I’m sitting still, but it beats fast. Too fast. A feeling of dread comes over me. Here we go again…

I have a condition called supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), which is basically an electrical system malfunction in my heart. When I have an episode, it’s scary because my heart races up to 260 beats per minute. Or I should say when I used to have an episode. Thanks to Healthnetwork Foundation and YPO, all that is behind me. Here’s my story.

In 2016 I had an ablation done to cauterize the misfiring pathway in my heart. It’s a pretty standard procedure and should have fixed the problem. And for a while, it seemed like it had. But seven months after I gave birth to my first child, I started having the episodes again. Except this time, it was much worse. Whereas I used to have an episode maybe once every five years, now it was happening every week. I also noticed something different going on this time. First, I would feel a weird slow rhythm, and then after 20-30 minutes, it would jump to a super-fast heart rate.

Besides being scary for me, it started to take a toll on our family. I had a new baby, and I was having to go to the emergency room just about every week to get a medication by IV to slow my heart rate down. I was scared to travel, even for a quick weekend trip, because I never knew when it might happen, and I wanted to be close to good medical care.

I did some research and found an electrophysiologist near our home who had great scores and had a lot of experience with different SVT cases. When I went to see him, he quickly determined that we should re-do the ablation. When I told him about the unusual slow rhythm, he was a bit dismissive. “I don’t know why you’re feeling that,” he said. “You shouldn’t feel a slow rhythm.”

I left his office feeling disappointed and disoriented. How can he tell me I shouldn’t feel something? I do feel it.

My husband, David, and I agreed we should get another opinion. He called Healthnetwork Foundation, which he has access to through YPO, and I was linked up with Jennifer Donnellan as my medical coordinator. She helped me get an appointment with Dr. Christopher McLeod at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida within two weeks. I couldn’t believe it! I’d been calling around to different places and kept hearing I’d have to wait a month or two to see a cardiologist.

My appointment at Mayo was a totally different experience. Dr. McLeod listened carefully and took his time. Instead of dismissing my concerns about the slower heart rhythm, he asked a lot of questions. He reviewed my EKGs from all those ER trips. He listened to me.

“You’re right,” he said. “You do feel a slow rhythm. I think you have two electrical pathways going on.”

What a relief. He gets it! I thought.

He agreed with the other doctor that something had gone wrong with the first ablation, and it would need to be redone. But he also explained that I had two abnormal pathways—one causing the fast rhythm and one causing the slow rhythm. He kind of geeked out on my case because this kind of case is uncommon.

My surgery turned out to be more complicated than anyone expected. An ablation usually takes 1-3 hours, but mine took six hours. Dr. McLeod found one of the pathways quickly—it appears the ablation I had done in 2016 only injured the tissue; it did not completely cauterize it. So that was an easy fix. But the second pathway was tucked under a flap of tissue and was hard to find. I’m convinced most surgeons would not have taken so much time searching for it. They would have found the injured tissue from the first ablation, fixed that, and assumed that was it. That would’ve been standard procedure and a reasonable approach. But Dr. McLeod is brilliant, and he had listened to me about the slow rhythm, so he hung in there for six hours until he found the other pathway.

It’s been almost five months since the surgery, and I haven’t had a single episode. I’m so grateful to Jennifer and Healthnetwork for making that appointment happen. If not for them, I probably just would’ve taken the first doctor’s recommendation and had the ablation re-done—and I’m sure they would not have found that second pathway. It’s such a relief to be back to normal life, enjoying my family without the constant stress and fear. Thank you YPO and Healthnetwork!