@sunshine3657
So I finally got off atenolol a few weeks ago. How? Since I had rebound stopping just 6 mg, I took a knife and chopped my pills to bits. I looked at the 6 mg (1/4 pill) and picked out smaller bits estimating 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 mg. I used those to gradually taper down over the next 3 weeks. Success! No usual tachycardia rebound after 60 hours. Everything was great for a week and BP and HR went right back up to the normal range. Great!

The bad news. Kisqali (cancer med) caused my afib. 5 long episodes a month for nearly 5 years. I stopped Kisqali and episodes immediately dropped to 1 per month for a year. A week after stopping atenolol suddenly I started going into afib once or twice a week with no identifiable trigger. Pattern has changed to a variable number of hours (23-38 vs 40-65 before), higher heart rate during (170 vs 150), an even more chaotic pattern, and tachycardia for a few hours after afib stops, BP not dropping as low. Oops! So not total success after all unless this is a temporary form of rebound.

My neuro issues have done well with the wean off plan. No rebound there. Yay!

I will have a pulsed field ablation before the end of the year (waiting for a date) so I want my BP and HR to be normal and don’t want atenolol masking anything during the ablation. I’m not starting atenolol again, but it may be a long 2-3 months before the ablation if the afib doesn’t slow down. It’s been a long 6 years with this annoying afib.

Good luck to others. I had my cardiologist’s blessing to stop atenolol. Be sure you do to be safe. Not sure I’m totally safe but I’m on Eliquis and will power through. ❤️