Thanks so much for your help. Stopping my heart chemically and using the paddles to shock me three times made me convinced I never want A-fib again and will do anything to prevent a recurrence. I look forward to reading the advice and posts of folks more experienced than I.

jimana, I learned a great deal from your experiences. However you did not elaborate on the hyper thyroid aspect. My wife had an afib bout and was diagnosed as having an over active thyroid. She is being treated by a cardiologist and an endocrinologist. On the ablation issue, you may see from other comments I have made that my two procedures went well. That is I was two years between having afib issues. It is really discouraging sometimes to have to live with the spectre of your heart goinh out of whack and the very unpleasant side effects these meds produce. Good luck.

Thanks for your comments @jhoffmanj. We're always learning and if we're not, we might as well go out and eat grass with the cows one one of my teachers often said. Since you mention the thyroid gland, my wife's experience may be of benefit to someone. After having a heart attack in 2003, she had a recurring A-fib problem and as we travelled around the country in our motor home, we would find ourselves in some ER in the middle of the night from the east coast to the west coast. She was taking Synthroid at the time and a cardiologist who was filling in for her doctor said that too much thyroid hormone might be the problem. We stopped it and she was A-fib free for several years. This fact may help someone: a doctor later on said she needed to take something for her thyroid and prescribed an unusual form - Tirosint - which uses an oil-based delivery system. She tolerated it well and it worked like a charm. Two more bits of info from my situation: (1) I learned some months after my repeated A-fib episodes that excessive vitamin D levels can bring on A-fib. I had been taking 10K units a day and that may well have triggered my A-fib. (2) I learned from my old friend, Mr. Google, that older men who have been using men's progesterone cream for prostate help for more than five years can send them on an A-fib journey. Needless to say I reduced my D3 and cut out the progesterone.