Dealing with never-ending doctor visits

Was the drug they gave her Metoprolol? I am a little puzzled by What you wrote about cardioversion. They don’t let you go two or three weeks Staying on afib. Normally, they cardiovert it the first day.. do you mean the Afib kept coming back?

Over a year ago, I was in the hospital for four days with afib. They couldn’t Cardiovert me because my PCP had given me an antibiotic that had a four day half-life and screwed up the electrical charges in your heart. They did try to Cardiovert me the first day, and it didn’t work. On the third day gave me metoprolol and within about an hour the afib stopped.

Since then, I’ve spoken to a retired cardiologist friend and he told me he takes metoprolol whenever he feels his heart speeding up, Or if he’s under stress, Because it prevents afib, for him.

I had my doctor switch me from Coreg to Metropolol and it has resolved my heart rate rising unexpectedly and hopefully he prevents the next afib event.

Hey Scott, Hear ya loud and clear! Just finished reading an article this AM by a hospice nurse who said that her dying patients’ greatest regret was that they never appreciated their health! But isn’t that the truth??
Many of us are on drugs we can’t even pronounce or have conditions we never heard of - let alone the “specialists” who only treat THAT disease…WTF??
But this is just another bump along the way, OK? Your Afib could be caused by a variety of things, not just anemia. And to say that it is caused by 5 sessions of targeted SBRT is ridiculous, IMO. You need a LOT of whole body exposure - or certainly more than that targeted to something as small as a prostate - to get anemia.
You might have low iron too, which is very common as we age, or low B12 levels. Hopefully this array of MDs will figure it out.
On a personal note, my wife consistently runs very high Potassium levels on her bloodwork. Her MD finally sent her to a kidney specialist who ran all kinds of blood and urine tests - even collecting all her urine in a 24 hr period. Guess what he found? NOTHING! He told her she was fine and simply ran high potassium. Duh??
So do what you gotta do, don’t get frustrated and remember that all those waiting rooms are filled with people just like you who would rather be gardening, playing pickleball or eating a bucket of Chicken Wings with a couple of beers…hang in there, bud..,

I take low dose Metoprolol (25 mg) to keep paroxysmal Afib at bay but once or twice a year it pops up. When that happens, I take an emergency dose of 50 mg. That had always worked in the past, but this time it didn't. I also have gotten Afib from anxiety. When I was diagnosed with prostate cancer I went into Afib four times in one week just from being at such a high anxiety level.

Now they want me to see an electrophysiologist and possibly do an ablation. It seems East Coast doctors are much more aggressive than when I lived on the West Coast. The couple times this happened when I lived in California they just gave me propofol, cardioverted me, and sent me on my way two hours later. Here, they want all sorts of tests and followup.

I (hopefully) can help with the potassium thing. My doctor called telling me my potassium was off the charts. I didn't believe it as I had no symptoms but agreed to a retest. The phlebotomist told me that, when testing for potassium, using a tourniquet before drawing blood causes the results to skew high since some blood vessels burst, releasing potassium. Sure enough, when my blood was taken without a tourniquet my potassium was totally normal.

Speaking of doctor visits, I have another one today — a bone density scan to establish a baseline, so that we can tell if I'm losing bone mass on ADT a few years from now.

Yep, we have lots of medical visits with prostate cancer. But also, it's a nice winter day and an easy transit ride to the hospital, where all I have to do is flash my OHIP card at the check-in desk, so it's not really a hassle — I try never to forget how lucky I am to have been born in a rich country with good healthcare (like many others here).

And I'll take myself out for tea after, because I always like to combine a treat with my visits to keep me in a positive frame of mind. 🙂

Speaking of doctor visits, I have another one today — a bone density scan to establish a baseline, so that we can tell if I'm losing bone mass on ADT a few years from now.

Yep, we have lots of medical visits with prostate cancer. But also, it's a nice winter day and an easy transit ride to the hospital, where all I have to do is flash my OHIP card at the check-in desk, so it's not really a hassle — I try never to forget how lucky I am to have been born in a rich country with good healthcare (like many others here).

And I'll take myself out for tea after, because I always like to combine a treat with my visits to keep me in a positive frame of mind. 🙂

Google "the cat in the hat on aging"

Think of all the good we do by stimulating the medical economy.

I just got a call from my hospital's business office, and apparently I had two outstanding bills from last year. The total was about $50. I was so happy it was such a small amount that I paid it over the phone right then and there and told the lady to have a nice day. I cannot for the life of me figure out all the billing paperwork.

Every time I get a PSA I get a bill weeks later for $3.18 ??