Who likes taking anything they didn't take when they were 15?

I'm 73, will be 74 end-of-June. Lifelong runner, cyclist, snowshoer, who ran my heart hard. It wasn't the running, although the literature is highly convincing that endurance athletes often, too often, go on to develop AF. No, it was 'severe obstructive sleep apnea', found only on the last diagnostic test my cardiologist asked me to undergo (chest X-rays, two MIBI stress tests with contrast, each approximately 500 chest X-rays worth of radiation, Doppler ultrasound of carotid arteries, echocardiogram, angiogram, and MRI. I now glow in the dark!).

The risk of a stroke from a clot when in AF, or having recently had a run of it lasting several long hours, rises to about five (5) times the 'normal' risk for a person of your age and general condition. We're both in our 70's, sssooooooo......

The area of concern is the 'left atrial appendage', or LAA. It's a small pouch at upper left of the left atrium, that vessel being where our AF originates. The LAA is poorly flushed of blood when the atrium is fibrillating. Blood can begin to clot inside it as a result. Your heart then resumes NSR where that strong tidal action flushes out the clot(s) and they get shoved out the aorta and into your lungs, your coronary arteries, your brain, your kidneys...not a salutary event, surely.

For paroxysmal patients, which I'm guessing you are at this early stage, the 90% probability is that the area of concern where the rogue signals originate is in the ostia, or mouths, of the four pulmonary veins. They empty oxygenated blood coming from the lungs into the left atrium, which forces it through the mitral valve into the chamber below it, the left ventricle, which powerfully ejects it up and out of the aorta through the aortal valve, also a one-way valve like the mitral valve. An electrophysiologist would offer to ablate the tissue around the pulmonary veins. This causes scarred tissue which is impassable to the rogue signals. They'll still be there, forever, still trying to get out, but the scar 'dam' blocks them. No signals, no atrial fibrillation, which is what you want. Fibrillation left unmanaged invites problems over time which we needn't discuss just now.

So, it's up to you: would you rather avoid the risk of a stroke, or are you willing to take the risk and enjoy not having the expense and the obligation to routinely ingest two 5 mg pills each day?