AF is increasing common among the aged and lifelong aerobic sports athletes. It's not a lethal disorder, but it does progress usually, sometimes slowly, sometimes over months to making the host truly miserable.

Essentially, if you're still in the early stage, paroxysmal, it's the best time to seek treatment. The gold standard is 'catheter ablation', and it's day surgery.

The longer you let it go untreated or unmanaged, and the more 'burden' you experience as the months and years go by, the more your heart 'remodels' itself. Generally this is not desirable. It can lead to cardiomyopathy, enlarged left atrium and ventricle, sometimes degraded mitral valve. It just gets tougher to manage the longer you put of managing it. So, do something earlier rather than later.

You want to meet an electrophysiologist. These heart electricians specialize in treating arrhythmias. They are the ones who run the 'cath lab' at hospitals where arrhythmia patients receive the ablation procedures.

Don't be put off by all the demands of the EP. He/she will want their own diagnostics, from chest x-ray all the way up to MRI and an angiogram.....depending on your health and the EP being consulted. It's generally not a fast process and can take weeks.

Bottom line, AF won't kill you. It makes some of us truly miserable, and we wish we could die. Others don't seem to notice or to mind, and life goes on. So, your symptoms and your fastidiousness about personal care are what run the clock. If you feel awful, can't rest, worry a lot, and want this mole whacked ASAP, then you'll get in line to see an EP.