@sweetmarie4me2 Sorry, Christmas, little urchins under foot, and all that. You can tell you're in AF if you take your radial pulse (at the wrist) or at the neck, and you don't feel a regular surge as if you were in normal sinus. You can feel the pulse when the left ventricle pumps, and that's the bump you feel under your finger(s). If you feel weird spacing, feeble pumps, or it's all over the place, that is an arrythmia, but as yet indeterminate. You need an ECG (if you're not very experienced at how AF feels under your fingers) and that can come from many smart watches, or a FitBit, or even some blood pressure monitors have an ECG built into them and it will show on the display if it detects a AF (atrial fibrillation). Otherwise, its an ECG in a doctor's office or an ER.

Many/most of us can feel thumps and bumps in our chest wall, left side, when we are in arrythmia like PACs or AF. We might also feel anxious without understanding why...we just do, and it's worrying. Or, shortness of breath, even feeling faint, is sometimes what an AF patient feels. As you may know only too well, some have no idea and feel fine. It's the same with atrial flutter, BTW. I know a retired professor, he and his wife VERY active in their late 70's, and he had no clue he'd feen in flutter when he went for a checkup. They hurried him along to an ablation inside of 10 days and they did so because they were worried he might have been in flutter for weeks!

The way you can tell by looking at any graphic, an ECG, is to know what the QRS complex is, and what comes before it and right after it. There's a thing called a 'p wave' that is a small blip right before the large squiggles on an ECG. If that is absent, it's almost certainly AF. But another tell is if the distance in squares between the R waves, the tallest spikes, varies from beat to beat. If those are short and long, and unpredictable, then it's AF.

You can be in AF a long time, but not if its above 110 BPM (beats per minute). Much above 110 means your ventricle is also beating quickly, and that shouldn't go on longer than 24 hours. If you have an arrhythmia with a countable beat higher than 100 that goes on as long as 24 hours, see a cardiologist ASAP if that can happen quickly/soon, or go to your ER and get cardioverted and probably placed on a IV drip of metoprolol. Bottom line, you don't need to suffer, to be afraid. Get help before you fold up with your thumb in your mouth. You're no good to anyone, least of all yourself, if you fold because of anxiety, fear, inability to look after yourself. Please! Act early enough that you can be helped and that you can commence treatment that works.