WHAT GOOD CAN COME OUT OF THIS?

Michael Gibson, senior pastor of Keene Seventh-day Adventist Church in Texas, graced the stage as guest speaker for Florida Camp Meeting April 2025 at Camp Kulaqua in High Springs, Florida. His first talk Friday night revealed himself to be an alumni of Southwestern Adventist University, also in Keene, Texas. When he polled the audience for other alumni from SWAU, my hand went up. Why is this important? Hang in there with me a moment, and I’ll tell you.

Saturday afternoon, the following day, following church then lunch, I stood outside Hornsby Spring for almost two hours taking photographs of baptisms being performed in the spring. The intense sun beat down, depleting my electrolytes, but I didn’t feel thirsty or overheated. Regardless, I returned to my villa after being in the sun and drank about eight ounces of Propel. (I know that’s not a lot, but I felt fine.) I went about the rest of my afternoon and early evening, enjoying the camp programs.

After supper in the cafeteria, I sat for a while and talked with a new friend I had made during the evening meal. As I stood to leave, around 7:30pm, I noted the senior pastor from my home church in Orlando, Florida, sitting and talking with Michael Gibson in the back of the cafeteria. I felt a smirk come over my face as I remembered a sermon our pastor had presented in January of 2023, where instead of “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1: 46) he had teased, “Can anything good come out of Southwestern Adventist University?” Being a SWAU alumni, I had assured our pastor something good definitely can and did come from SWAU. For starters, my mom and dad met there, married, and had me. So, when I saw the two pastors sitting there, I intended to share this inside joke with Michael Gibson. But, instead, as I neared their table, I became acutely aware of something being off. I mean really off!

Looking down at my Fitbit, the numbers on my watch displayed 95 and climbing, my heart rate quickly surpassing 100, hanging around 113BPM, despite my casual walking and no outside stressors. I sat on a nearby chair, several tables away from the pastors, and debated what to do next. Having just been hospitalized with supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) three weeks prior, with a heart rate of 215BPM, I knew I had to take this moment seriously, even if I didn’t know the cause. I also knew that low tachycardia doesn’t usually cause pricking and heaviness in my chest, so my thoughts promptly landed on the only source of help I could think of: camp nurse.

Please excuse me as I deviate a moment and share another piece of important information to this story. You see, roughly thirty-eight years ago, I had been at Camp Kulaqua as a camper during summer camp. Early in that week, during one of our camp activities at the Nature Center, I blacked out for several minutes. I still have no idea how I got from the Nature Center down to the spring, but I had never blacked out before, and I have never blacked out since. Regardless, the camp nurse followed me around the rest of the week, and PTSD caused me to struggle with the thought of approaching the camp nurse for assistance during camp meeting, in the present. However, I knew my safety must come first.

I could go on about how my BP registered 210/108 Saturday night and how we believe I might have been dealing with dehydration. Or how I had an irregular-irregular heart rhythm. Or how I spent the next 4.5 hours drinking 80 ounces of water and Propel, balancing my system. Or how I woke the next morning with an overnight heart rate of 56BPM jumping to 113BPM, causing my resting heart rate to hang around the mid 90s for no known reason.

Instead, I’ll dive in and share with you that we called the camp nurse again, Sunday morning, and verified I needed a visit to Shands ER in Gainesville. Despite everything I had done right while at home following my April 2^nd SVT episode, being outside my regular routine had distracted me from hydrating well enough to protect my blood pressure and heart rhythm. Kicking myself for not being more in tune with my needs, I lamented, “Lord, what good can come out of this?” I had worked so hard to be able to attend camp meeting in person and stay out of the hospital, and now this. Task failed.

For thirteen hours, an EKG, CT scan, observation, and lab work filled my day at Shands ER. Doctors compared my April 27, 2025, EKG with one taken April 14, 2025, at AdventHealth Apopka during a cardiac follow up, and the depressions in my current scans seemed greater than the previous ones. This caused the doctors concern, so they deemed it best to keep me over night and monitor my heart instead of releasing me to go home. They couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t go into SVT, a-fib, “or one of 18 other-type rhythms.” If I didn’t feel guilty enough for not watching my hydration closely, causing this health issue, I now had two different pet sitters and their schedules at home to consider, plus my husband Lee needed to get his laptop back from the AV team at camp so he could work on slides for Monday morning’s office worship at the conference office, and then we had to arrange for him not to be at the office at all on Monday when the hospital docs chose to keep me over night. Let’s just say, I felt two inches tall. However, God’s reveal came during my hospital hold.

While in observation at Shands Sunday night into Monday morning, I had not one but TWO doctors confused as to why I’d be taking Mirtazipine for anxiety. I had no clue. I had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in 2014 and placed on the meds when major trauma caused me to stop eating and sleeping. I followed doctors orders and took my meds as prescribed. I had never had any known issues with it, yet, in recent days and weeks, I had noticed more and more “skipping” with my heart. Due to Shands’ doctors’ concerns, I asked, “Could Mirtazapine be causing my arrhythmias?” Their answer: Yes, that can be a side effect. They went on to say they highly recommended I be weaned off it and put on an SSRI, if, in fact, I still needed medication after eleven years. The “if” in their conversation got me to wondering, “Can SVT cause anxiety? And, if I have an ablation, and the SVT goes away, is there a possibility the anxiety will, too?”

The first response I received in my online search came from Harvard.edu and read, “Electrophysiologists (cardiologists who specialize in heart rhythm disorders) will tell you that in young women, SVT is commonly misdiagnosed as anxiety or panic disorder.” Ding! Ding! Ding! I’ve been dealing with SVT since high school. That’s a fact. I have SVT, officially diagnosed December of 2019.

My concern has been: So, what trips an SVT episode? I’ve been told no one knows for certain–or at least they can’t agree on a cause. Caffeine, possibly? (No worries. I don’t drink soda or coffee. Yeah, I know. I’m weird.) Alcohol? (Not my lifestyle. Not a contributing factor for me.) Stress or anxiety? (I’ve lived in fight or flight for many years. This one I’ve had in spades.) But the reason for heart issues now when nothing has been super stressful in my life? That may remain a mystery. However, I received promising news from a medical family member. She told me two of her patients have had heart ablations in the past three to four months, and, after this procedure, all of their anxiety symptoms have disappeared. This has lead to me to seriously consider having an ablation, as well. I meet with my electrophysiologist on May 7, 2025.

The one piece of information I’ve shared with multiple doctors during this journey is how I feel like my lungs are contributing to my heart issues or possibly tripping the SVT episodes. Right before my last episode, my lungs felt rattly and strange, but I pressed through the stress of the moment, ignoring my gut feeling that probably would’ve stopped the SVT episode from happening. To my credit, SVT has always presented differently in the past, and I’ve always listened to those warnings. Doctors dismissed my theorizing, however, with two pulmonologists in April 2025 telling me, “That’s unheard of.” During my research this last week, I found via www.cedars-sinai.org under “diseases and conditions” this information: “SVT is often caused by faulty electrical signaling in your heart. It often begins with beats that happen too soon. Some types of SVT run in families. Other types may be caused by lung problems.” Interesting. Maybe I’m not crazy, after all.

When Covid hit my system July 29, 2021, a clinic doing a sleep study on me reported I had gone 108 minutes with my O2 at 85 percent. Per a sleep specialist doctor, sleep apnea usually only causes low oxygen levels for 5-10 minutes. I went 10 times that long! As many of you know, I almost died of acute respiratory distress on August 1, 2021, when my Covid symptoms poured mucus down my throat at an alarming rate, and I couldn’t clear my air passages fast enough to breathe. If God hadn’t intervened, I know I wouldn’t be here today. How does this connect to my recent story? Because Covid began the discovery of several underlying health challenges I didn’t even know I had. Hard to heal something if you don’t know what the problem is.

I spent MONTHS dealing with unexplainable “weird Covid symptoms.” One of the most frightening experiences included feeling trapped in my body while sensations scattered from head to toe. Looking back now, and knowing everything I felt and where I felt it, I truly wonder if it has connections to my SVT and internal electrical system, as I’m learning the heart and nervous system work very closely together. It took doctors almost a year to the day to diagnose me with Covid-induced asthma and find the air trapping in my lungs (August 2022). In the meantime, I started using a CPAP machine faithfully every night, warding off feelings of suffocation while I slept. For my body, it takes seven hours on the CPAP to keep anxiety away, and there’s a process transitioning every morning to regular air–no jumping out of bed and immediately being ready to start the day. It’s been quite the adjustment. So, what does this have to do with my ER visit to Shands?

All. Day. Sunday. I laid in that ER bed, my blood pressure ranging from 133-178 over 88-99 (a couple times even higher). Uncomfortable, with heavy chest, I didn’t understand why answers seemed unavailable for this obvious problem. I haven’t been on blood pressure medication for 3.5 years. I haven’t needed them. I take my vitals daily. I know my blood pressure is normally 120/80 or just below, well within a safe and healthy range. So, why the high BP readings now? Why a hospital visit with an unfamiliar hospital system and unknown doctors, two to three hours from my trusted team of physicians? You want to know why? Because God knew the environment I would be placed in during this unexpected ER stay; and He knows I’m a visual learner, needing to see hourly data on hospital monitors that would allow me to connect the dots. “And, what dots are those?” you ask?

Despite not being given an IV for fluids, I stayed well hydrated orally, going to the bathroom many times over the course of the 13 hours in the ER portion of my day. This, along with lab results, helped me rule out dehydration. I also noted my heart rate and oxygen saturation stayed normal all day. But my blood pressure? That wonkiness had me stumped, until relocation landed me in the observation unit over night, and I hooked myself up to my CPAP machine to go to sleep. Guess what happened? Within THIRTY MINUTES (or less) of putting on my CPAP mask, my blood pressure dropped to normal. I kid you not! Not only did it drop to normal, it stayed there ALL. NIGHT. LONG. Every hourly blood pressure check sang the same beautiful tune: “You’re out of the danger zone! It’s safe to close your eyes.”

So, what good came out of an unwanted and unexpected ER visit during camp meeting? Well, I can now connect some of my heart issues with my lungs. Others people can no longer tell me I’m making it up. I can also explain the likelihood for the sensations that scatter all over my body (heart, brain, anxiety, and histamine connection), and I’m also aware the meds I’ve been taking for eleven years are possibly related to the uptick of heart arrhythmias I’ve been experiencing, and the meds may not be needed. (You can be certain I will be discussing this with my doctors and won’t be detoxing without medical supervision.) But, the best news? Most of this is fixable. Years and years of muddied health challenges are now spilling over with legit answers. I’m aware there are no quick fixes. It’s taken me a lifetime (nearly half a century) to get to this point, but there is genuine, long-term hope; and, for that, I am over-the-moon grateful!

Thank you, God, for bringing something good out of a truly undesirable situation; and thank you for making our bodies to heal! “In my distress I prayed to the Lord, and the Lord answered me and set e free. I will not die; instead, I will live to tell what the Lord has done.” Psalms 118: 5, 17 NLT