@yorlik. I am 22yrs from my by pass surgery the Dr put me on 81mg aspirin I take one daily along with statin and b.p.pill Your attitude reflects on your condition so try to accept your afib and do as your cardiologist @surgeon says. when I had my chest cracked open then when the surgeon closed the nerves didn't align up this wasn't his fault but I had to have the anesthesiologist inject my chest it fixed the issue and it hurt but keeping a positive attitude and going on with your life I was all right 22yrs later so you will be o.k. ,relax the Dr knows what he is doing.

Hi @yorlik. It sounds like you are increasingly concerned, although your doctors seem to have rallied around more consensus than before. Important facts about A-fib may be at the center of your uncertainty. If so, here's a link to a Mayo Clinic web site on A-fib: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/atrial-fibrillation/symptoms-causes/syc-20350624.

A-fib is a much more general and widespread malady than just the one case of open heart surgery. It involves mainly irregular electrical impulses in the atrium, which often cause irregularities in the contraction of the ventricles (which, as you know, are the main pumps sending blood to your lungs and entire body). Nor is it always a short-term condition -- sometimes it becomes permanent. I have several personal friends who have had A-fib symptoms for years, as I have. As I understand it, A-fib as a single problem is rarely treated by a Pacemaker. Instead, treating A-fib starts with medication to regularize the heart beat, sometimes followed by "cardioversion" which resets the heart rhythm with medication or other procedures. Then "ablation" is the next level of treatment to zero out some wayward electrical currents that trigger contractions at the wrong time. Ablation can take several forms, ranging up to physical scarring of the electrical circuits, and those treatments have been successful for friends who have had them.

I also want to emphasize that "blood thinners" like Eliquis and Coumadin are NOT used to treat A-fib. They are prescribed to control the coagulation of your blood so it doesn't form blood clots when it pools for a time in the heart, awaiting good and strong signals to move on through the heart and into your body. In my case, I suffered a small stroke from a blood clot that blocked an artery in my brain. It was NOT a transient ischemic attack (TIA) but a plain old ischemic stroke in the "periventricular cells" deep in my brain. We speculate that the two glasses of wine interfered with my "blood thinners," first causing them be neutralized, then falling behind my rising coagulation level, which caused the clot to form and stay whole until it blocked circulation in a small part of my brain. Before that incident, I took a glass of wine a couple of times a week with dinner. Now I don't want to take the chance, and although I've lost some of my adventurous social spirit, that's a small price to pay for a new feeling to confidence that my medical team knows what they are doing.

Bottom line, I don't for a moment feel a loss of my future or a decline into old-man frailty. I just got back from the bowling alley and our weekly league meet, featuring 128 senior citizens aged 60 to 90 and averaging 76. I'm bowling 175 routinely now and rolled a 237 game and 565 series of 3 games last week. Not as good today, but pleased with my final game of 190. Would you like to become a substitute for our team? One or another of us has to skip out once a month, and we could use your help!