Newly onset Afib

@red350 I hope you'll accept that I sympathize fully. I was horrible when in AF, and people said I looked distinctly grey in the weeks before my first of two ablations for AF. I was in the ICU with a runaway HR six days after my index ablation, and also placed on amiodarone for seven weeks. Then, about two months later, visiting my youngest with her little toddler, I was hunched over so he could hold my pinkie while we walked down the sidewalk and I got that familiar swelling feeling and then the thump and bump. Back in AF. I got fast agreement from my EP that he would attempt a redo, and the second one worked.

Getting a follow-on arrhythmia is unfortunately common. Those whose hearts begin to have more PACs will often find themselves in AF inside of a few months. Those whose AF seems to have been nubbed by a successful ablation often find that they're now in flutter (which is much easier to ablate successfully.....thank the Big Guy!). My point is that once the heart decides it's going to be electrically disordered, it runs the show. Everything else we do is palliative (if you know the official definition of that term...it doesn't mean 'terminal).

I, too, was given two large horse pills for low potassium. My dad, now departed, went to hospital three times in his last seven years due to low sodium, or hyponatremia as it is called. Electrolyte imbalance in the aged is common, often because of poor nutrition, but also often due to simply dehydration. When I make a cuppa coffee for me and my missus each early afternoon, I sprinkle some table salt and some potassium salt (same place on your local grocer's shelves) into the drip carafe first. Life gets more......ummm.....'involved'....as we age.

Not to be argumentative, but you're not back at square one. With the aging heart, none of us ever can be. We have an aging heart, it continues to advance in degeneration along with our organs, our skin, and unfortunately our brains. Ablations can stop the accelerated degradation of the heart that AF and other tachyarrhythmias can cause, such as valve prolapse, vessel thickening or enlargement, and ultimately heart failure. But they won't stop the heart from looking for new paths to confound its own internal wiring. AF, for sure, is a progressive disorder. But, it's not a lethal disorder....it won't kill us. It can make us WANT TO die if we are highly symptomatic and have a lot of anxiety or sleepless nights, but virtually every AF patient will eventually die from something else. AF doesn't kill its hosts.

I do, absolutely, now how it makes you feel. A bit defeated, maybe even cheated. Bummed at the very least. 😀 As I alluded to initially, my first ablation failed, almost a disaster. I was almost worse off! I was in that unhappy statistic that 25% of all ablations fail to control the arrhythmia, at least for AF. Why me?!?!? I have never been lucky, or so I told myself at the time. Looking back on everything that has gone right in my life, I'm wwwwaaaaaaaAAAAAY ahead of the game. I should be laughing...literally. And, my second ablation has had me in blissful NSR for 38 months now. What price for that!?

Try to be optimistic. One worked, you got that nasty opportunistic new arrhythmia, so common, but it's also treatable the same way. If you can stand one suggestion, it is to seek out the very best, busiest, and widely reputed EP you can afford and travel to...if you must. You want someone who can deal with 'complex cases', which you are now.

Thank you. I will keep on the meds and keep focusing on the future and treatment. Of course I’m hoping it doesn’t come back or if it does not for a long time - one can hope. But we all know hope is for suckers as my sister says and you have to figure things out! What I am focusing on is that a fib originates in a substrate of the heart muscle and even after it is treated and abladed successfully, there can be other electronic glitches in another substrate of the heart that can cause a fib to occur there. So it seems to me that it’s an issue of stamping out little fires throughout the rest of your life and hoping that each stamp gives you longer arrhythmia free time.

I’ve also upped my potassium and water intake today. And time to go back to total anti inflammatory diet. I was inching into some dark chocolate……and sorbet.

Thanks again for your response. Appreciate it.

@gloaming
Hi thank you so much for putting my mind at rest. The most important message I took from your answer was....AF can't kill us.....because when my heart keeps skipping a beat, as it doesn't go more than 30 seconds without missing or skipping a beat, it makes me very worried and I always wonder what it is doing to my heart.
I am 72, low cholesterol and glucose,average weight, interactive thyroid on Eltroxin, blood pressure is normal and my heart never races, it just skips along doing it's own thing !
Over the past 40 years, I have had halter monitors, ecg's, angiograms, blood tests infact all the cardio Drs say it's the electrical activity of the heart, but not serious enough to do an ablation.
I wonder how bad I have to get before they decide I should be medicated or have an ablation?
Does my heart rhythm sound too minor ? Because to me it is very scary and I don't want my heart to stop beating ......
I really sympathise with anyone who has this,because we all only have one heart and we don't know if the skipping is doing damage to our hearts.....
Thank you for reading my message....

@red350 '...I’ve also upped my potassium ...'

Please go slow on this. When I used the word 'imbalance', that could be what makes the teeter totter rise on one end and fall on the other, or the other way around. IOW, you could, ostensibly, be supplementing too much already. As an explanation, there is hypokalemia, but also hyperkalemia. All in one patient, but a week apart. Additionally, the kidneys have to work hard to excrete excesses of whatever they can filter out that the body doesn't need or want. Potassium can be especially hard on kidneys that are functioning marginally, or that have high creatinine levels.....so please tread carefully with supplementation. Always check with your doctor about increasing/decreasing anything you take by mouth for a purpose other than nutrition.

@kathysavage1954 When you describe 'skipped beats', that is often not AF but PACs, or 'premature atrial contractions.' They are everywhere, all people, daily. Everybody has 1-30 each day. It's when they become intrusive, with what is called their 'burden', and they run thousands of times each day, and begin to degrade your quality of life, that an electrophysiologist would agree to try to stop them via an ablation procedure. Those more stoic, who endure silently, are unknown to those offering help. So, the squawking patient gets the time in their office and in their cath lab a few weeks later. 😀

PACs often signal an eventual onset of AF. People routinely begin to complain of 'skipped beats', or strong thumps in their chest after a pause, and this is typical of PACs. Many will eventually find themselves in full-blown AF and need an ablation, but so will those whose 'burden' of PACs runs higher than about 3-7% of their daily average, across humans, of about 84,000 beats. The literature I have read says that it is at the 3% rate that morbidity rises markedly. We don't know what your total is per diem, but it might be worth finding out. But the bottom line is, if you are willing to suffer in silence, nobody is the wiser who could help you.

@red350
I feel for you as I've experienced a lot of complications and unexpected adverse effects from procedures and meds. 5 years into afib and I still can't commit to ablation because of other conditions I have that make me more high risk than average for collateral damage. But I would like to mention the eliquis. Because I don't typically do well with meds and have missing enzymes to metabolize most meds properly, I was hesitant to take eliquis. I had several retinal TIAs that caused me to lose all or part of my vision for a couple minutes, all happening right at the end of a long afib episodes which is when clots tend to be thrown. My retinal specialist was freaking out that I wasn't on eliquis. Finally, I had a cognitive TIA (mini-stroke) right after a 30 hour afib episode where I couldn't speak or type any real words for few minutes. Very scary and I thought that was finally the big stroke as it was happening. Another clot thrown. It did do some lasting damage in my communication center, but just annoying stuff. It got my attention though and I finally went on eliquis after that. That was 7 months ago and I have not noticed any change is bleeding after blood tests, minor cuts or finger pricks. No extra bruising. I have had many more afib episodes since I started eliquis, but no more TIAs. Will I ever get the ablations (they told me 2-3 for me)? I don't know, but I intend to stay on eliquis and will encourage others to do the same. Best of luck to you in all of this. You've been through a lot. I pray that was a one-off afib episode and you're on your way to stress-free healthy living.

@californiazebra Thank you so much for sharing your story. I was really hoping I could live my life med free but sometimes reality paints a different picture. My mom was on warfarin and had many tias, vision loss like you mention and more. So if taking eliquis eliminates some of those risks I will continue. Appreciate your kind words and yes I am hoping this afib is a one and done caused by trauma due to the car vs dog accident that happened 2 days prior to it. Wishing you the best as well. 2-3 ablations is a lot to think about.