SVT and Me (Part 1): What it’s like to experience supraventricular tachycardia (SVT)

SPECIAL GUEST BLOGGER

Hi, Cardiogram Fam! We’d like to introduce a special guest blogger, Shaquana Graves (also known as Shay), a fellow Cardiogram member and cardiovascular technologist, as she shares Part 1 of her journey with SVT.

Supraventricular tachycardia (or SVT) is intermittent, unprovoked rapid heart rate that occurs when there is a disruption of the heart’s electrical system. This disruption causes the heart to produce lots of early beats in the upper chamber, the atrioventricular (AV) node, generating heart rates above a resting rate of 100 beats per minutes, sometimes maxing above 200 beats per minutes.

Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) ecg readout

What does SVT feel like?

To some, SVT episodes can mimic panic attacks, stress, and other mental health illnesses. For me, panic attacks and other mental health issues were foreign, so my episodes felt like bursts of cardio as if I were sprinting then abruptly stopping, leaving me to catch my breath, with low blood pressure, and feeling faint.

My experience with SVT

Have you ever dreamt of sprinting and being jolted out of your sleep, only to realize it was a dream? Well, that’s what SVT can feel like. Which can lead to physiological reactions that are often misdiagnosed as panic attacks. To further explain, SVT for me felt like mini workout sessions. You can imagine it as if frozen in silence as someone sneaks up behind you and yells, “Boo!!!” Your mental and physical response to the “BOO!” is what SVT felt like to me, sometimes lasting for 5 Mississippi minutes. Thankfully, as a distance runner with great endurance, I was able to fight through the episodes.

For a long time, my concerns weren’t taken seriously

Sadly enough, after countless trips to the emergency room, countless primary and specialty care visits, countless pleas to medical doctors, physician’s assistant, registered nurses, countless alternative, often unrelated tests (at one point, I was ordered a mammogram with chest pain and inflammation as the diagnosis), I had to figure out a way to prove to doctors that something was wrong.

I became my own health advocate

Most doctors saw a physically fit, athletic, young African American woman with intermittent symptoms and predominantly normal test measures. None of these things supported my fight, even after being on the brink of a heart attack at 29 years old at the start of this rollercoaster. I was known for my compassion and patient care advocacy but now I had to switch gears and advocate for myself. It was not an easy ride but finally, somewhere along the way, I found Cardiogram.

Read Part 2 to learn how I used Cardiogram to help me finally advocate for my own health and have my condition taken seriously...

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Shay

Shaquana, also known as Shay, is a cardiovascular technologist who is also passionate about fitness and wellness. She generally loves helping people (including helping them reach fitness goals). Shaquana also enjoys healthcare research, exercise physiology, and sports at large.

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