Wow. I got heartburn just reading your woes. I am so sorry you are going through this. Very stressful stuff. Firstly, I am speaking from personal experience but that is all I have to offer. My experience with Afib was quite different than yours and everyone seems to have their own definitive experience. I hope someone else can chime in with some reasonable ideas. I am 73 and had a friend drive me to ER some 20 years ago and my heart rate was 265 bpm; a serious case of afib. Amiodarone saved my life and once I was stable (still in hospital after 3 days) they switched me to a new blood thinner, Eliquis and Multaq and something for angina. Years later, lots of time at cardiologist as I had already stroked twice (cardioembolic) the multaq stopped working. They had no choice but to give me amiodarone daily which I was on until my ablation a year later. I wish I had done the ablation years sooner as it really seemed to help and I was able to get off the amiodarone. Unfortunately, now it is that I have supra ventricular tachycardia, post afib, Stage 1/2 congestive heart failure, and PVC's; the cardiologist says I have 3 choices: go back on the amiodarone; continue to come to ER when things go south and get blood work done, or ignore it.
I'm not much help, am I? I have opted to not do the amiodarone again due to such bad side effects. I have challenges with GP and Cardiologist as well and am considering looking for a new cardiologist. I can go on but, I think it won't help much as our stories are somewhat similar but obviously different too. The weighing of which way to go is on my heart (literally) now and reading stories like yours (and others) helps me to process for myself, so thank you for sharing. I wish you all the best on this leg of your journey. Hang in there...