During my medical training, I always seemed to find myself at the Veterans’ Affairs Hospital around Thanksgiving or Christmas. The day of the holiday itself was usually eerily quiet: We’d scrounge some holiday goodies from the nursing desks, eat a cafeteria dinner, and watch football or reruns of It’s a Wonderful Life, just like everyone else in America.
It was the day after the holiday that things would get interesting.
For healthy people, holiday excess—too much salty or spicy food, or too many cocktails in the form of an eggnog overdose—leads to an expected tummy ache, headache, and general post-party malaise.
But for people with heart or kidney failure or problems with alcohol or depression, the holidays are far more dangerous. It was often the day after the celebration that we’d see the fallout: the man in congestive heart failure after breaking his usual low-salt diet, the dialysis patient who tried to eat right but ended up buying high-potassium gravy (dangerous only if your kidneys don’t work), or the alcoholic who fell off the wagon—and fell hard.
But the most common syndrome I remember from those postholiday admissions is “holiday heart.” It turns out that binge drinking, particularly in older men, leads to a heart arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation. The day after Thanksgiving and Christmas brought a deluge of admissions—people who woke up feeling their hearts were racing or irregular.
This year I’ll be in the hospital after New Year’s Eve. While everyone is partying, my colleagues and I will be preparing to deal with the consequences.
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