I would have asked you to spend at least another 24 hours, longer if you could stand it, on the initial dose of diltiazem. If your heart is irritable, a mere 24 hours of a new drug isn't likely to free you from all of the irritability. Naturally, we all tell ourselves that the new drug is probably going to work, or we hope it will, and we expect improvement inside of 6-8 hours. Many of them don't work that way. Amiodarone, in case you're not familiar with it, is a 'big hammer' drug that one should hope to only have to take for a few months at most. It is based on iodine, and it is administered initially in a 'loading dose', often of 800mg/day for up to a week, and then the maintenance dose takes over that runs at about half that rate, or less.

Dealing with disorders such as sleep apnea and AF has as its fundamental requirement the ability to live comfortably. Many suffer from distressing palpitations in the chest wall, or they feel brain fog and even more irritable after some time on CPAP therapy for sleep apnea, even when their morning reports say their machines prevented the vast majority of obstructions and flow limitations. Apart from the numbers, for those with AF, and who don't handle the condition well, getting back into NSR is about all they can think about when not eating, sleeping, or showering. So, I understand your comment about the 'bad experience with diltiazem.' For me, amiodarone did the trick, and it held me out of arrhythmia for about five weeks. Maybe diltiazem will still do that for you, but ya gotta give it a fair chance. Just a suggestion.