Hello to you, and welcome. AF is, most unfortunately, a progressive disorder of the heart. It evolves over time. For some, the evolution is rapid, while for some it can take a decade or even two before more serious methods must be undertaken to keep it controlled. You seem to be like me; I was good on drugs for three years, and then the wheels got wobbly and began to fall off, one-by-one.

You are experiencing 'palpitations' which is the medical term for what the patient feels when his/her heart is misbehaving. It's not a diagnosis...it's a symptom. Just as a doctor cannot diagnose 'headache', because it's the patient that tells her what she has, the physician will look for a cause, and THAT is the diagnosis. In your case, you have what are very likely palpitations from a repeat of AF. Unless you have a way to determine for yourself that you have AF, you'll need a doctor or a nurse to feel your wrist, or you'll need an ECG (electrocardiogram) hooked up, 12 leads usually, and a 15 second reading taken when you feel the palpitations...which are coming and going.

That your palpitations are there, and then gone again, is a good sign. It means you're still in the 'paroxysmal' stage, the one where it's easiest to treat you. If you ignore the arrhythmia, your heart will continue to progress toward more advanced, and more difficult to treat, levels of AF. So you want to let your doctor know what is happening, and you want to be placed in the pipeline to see an electrophysiologist, hopefully a really good one locally. Note that their experience and skills vary between EPs, and you want the most skilled, the most experienced, the busiest, and the most successful EP there is. He/she will claim a success rate for first albations, which is what we're talking about procedurally, of at least 75% Ablation of the left atrium is what we're talking about, literally causing a circular, or coffer, dam of scar tissue, around the pulmonary veins where they empty their oxygenated pulmonary blood returned to the heart.

To keep this short, you'll have to ask a cardiologist about the changes, and hopefully get referred to an electrophysiologist, and EP, sooner rather than later when your heart is more advanced in its progression toward persistent, and then permanent AF.