Metoprolol is sometimes prescribed for 'incipient' hypertension, but it's main use in our cases is for 'rate control'. It's a beta-blocker, meaning it blocks the beta-adrenergic channel uptake in those channels. It is meant to keep a lid on the rapid ventricular rate when a person is in a tachyarrhythmia. It has varying degrees of success from patient-to-patient, and when getting too much of it there is a consistent complaint of shortness of breath, syncope, and very low heart rates.

Nobody can answer your direct question except you, and then only if you can get some kind of sympathetic response from a specialist willing to accommodate you. How it makes you feel, how much it degrades your quality of life, or in how much actual danger your heart function places you when you are in arrhythmia, those factors determine how quickly you can expect relief from surgical intervention. If it's urgent, you'll get urgent treatment after appropriate triage.

Many of us feel truly awful, and not the least anxious, when we know our hearts are malfunctioning. Some have no idea and feel perfectly fine right up until their annual physical when their GP looks up and says, 'You're fibrillating,' or 'Your heart rate is very high.' Much of the current electrophysiology field is palliative care. The heart is already disordered, but it may respond well to some kind of intervention, whether improved diet, improved hydration, reduction of triggers, medications, or surgery....or a pacemaker. All of those are meant to stall the deterioration which is sure to follow if the condition is left unmanaged. Palliative.

The conventional wisdom is that, sure, or yeah, or hell yeah, get a second opinion. If nothing else, it can confirm your suspicions, whichever way they lean, or they'll confirm your first expert's advice, in which case you proceed responsibly.

And it if helps the least little bit, I am probably very much like you. Competitive runner, healthy, thin, very strong and fit, very self-actualizing, and yet I developed AF near the end of a 10 km maintenance run when I was 65. After numerous diagnostics, including Doppler ultrasound of the carotid arteries, angiogram, MRI, and nuclear stress test on a treadmill, the last diagnostic was a polysomnography in a sleep lab one night. Result: severe sleep apnea. Apnea makes your body respond with the fight-or-flight response because you 'drown' several times each hour, all night long. Your heart pounds trying to keep your organs and brain alive, but you're in a deep sleep....not breathing past an obstruction.

So....................something is amiss with your system. It must be sought out and dealt with. After that, you may bet lucky and have no more arrhythmia, or you can get an ablation when things get bad enough that you can't live like that any more.