Heart Rhythm Conditions – Welcome to the group

Thank the insurance companies and Government. I can understand your frustration.

Thank you for this group. Might get more answered than from cardiologists that have blown many off. Times have changed in our area, it’s less than a 15 min appt. Waiting on a monitor for 3 months.

Was told 5 years ago, tachycardia. Was placed on one , 30 mg of Dicyclomine. Did not work. Was pushed off to another cardio, Flecainide but it raised my Bp and pharmacist was livid, black box warning. Flipped to electrocardio, waited 8 months, saw him 8 mins told me it’s my pain med from a botched TKR 2 years ago. Not a revision candidate. Pushed to another cardio , powder puffed it and my husband who is still experiencing pain AFTER s stent out in, which was 80% blocked with soft placque to 85% hard.

Having internal shaking, weak, heart going, Bp up and Bp can drop. Being tested for low cortisol since January, yet to only have a telemed appt. Is this what our country has come to? Thought, hey maybe stress and it’s in my women’s head, but everyday meet people who have no faith at all in our medical system.

Seen 3 nuero, Gastro’s, number cardio’s. Just playing with meds. Sending letter of intent to electrocardio for his remarks. This HAS ruined my health care. Today in blood lab, frequent flyer, 3 rd time this year. No babe, sweet thing paying your salary. Place was dead!

Anyone experiencing this, palpitations, weakness, heart going shaking, crashing in afternoon till 8 pm.

If you say it’s my pain med from 2 years ago, take ONE 3/4 of the pill a day. Don’t go there. Been 5 years.

That article does a good job of explaining and educating. I can see slight variations in protocol between my two ablations and what is described, but they are minor. Two that stand out are the purported duration of the procedure (which necessarily also means of the anesthetic) and the requirement to catheterize the bladder. In both of my experiences, the procedure lasted approximately 90 minutes and I was not advised that it would require my bladder to be drained while I was under. Obviously, with an IV drip running since admission, a four hour procedure would indeed require relief for the bladder.

This is the best article I have found that describes the ablation procedure. It actually tells you what to expect. If anyone is going to do an ablation, I would suggest reading this.
https://www.massgeneral.org/assets/mgh/pdf/heart-center/patientguidetopvi.pdf

Thank you so much for your response. I agree with everything you said. I am 76 now so I don't have a lot of years left in this old body. Mostly for me, it's the unknown that bothers me. I know that with having AFIB there is no cure. Best we can hope for is no ER runs or hospital stays. I was hoping for no surgeries but it has to be done so let's get on with it. I will not delay this decision like I did with the Watchman. Best of luck for all who suffer from AFIB. You are not alone and there are many of us out here that are in the same boat. Worse part is the lack of good, quality information out there.

My fervent hope, phoenix, is that you look back in a couple of years and marvel at how easy it all was, and that you have peace and calm, and that you can sleep, and that you experience no more palpitations after your ablation. I have had two separated by about seven months. It has been bliss since the second. I went from a slow spiral downward to my first, or index, ablation, but I was in the local ER only six short days later. I, too, was put on Amiodarone for about eight weeks. I had a good period of grace for the next three months, but I was in the ER starting New Year's Eve, and presented there each of the next three days with AF. Three cardioversions lasted between 16 hours and 20 minutes, with the reduction going successively.
Ablation is not a cure, unfortunately, but it can put you into a remission of sorts. Even if you only get 24 months of respite, you'll agree that the ablation was entirely worth it. In the hands of a truly capable electrophysiologist, you'll get several good years, even a decade, before you must return with newly established AF. This is not an absolute; not every single case devolves into a resumption of AF, just a whole lot of them. The best EPs will take a second crack at you, and often, about 80% of the time, this buys you another long stretch of time AF-free.
Please don't fret about an ablation. In good hands, the procedure works, and you'll go on with your life. You won't need metoprolol or other channel blockers, and some EPs will even let you stop taking anti-coagulants if you settle into a prolonged period with no more AF. This is quite common with a Watchman implant to close off the atrial appendage because that's where a huge chunk of the risk of clot-formation lies. Once that is done, your risk of stroke when out of AF lies only in other co-morbities...if you have any. That includes aging, though.

Good luck!

Just spent 3 days in hospital for AFIB. They had a hard time getting my heart rate down. So they sent me home with amiodarne 200mg. I am thinking of doing the ablations. Have appointment with cardiologist next week for that conversation. I had the Watchman put in ittle over 2 years ago. Have had minor AFIB episodes since then until this last weekend. Palpitations (hard pounding ones) with heart rate of 127. Primary care did an EKG and sent me to ER. This episode scared me a lot. So now I have to do the very thing I was avoiding.....ablation.

Hi Everyone, I just read a comment about monitoring your cardiac rhythm at home on smart watches and devices like Kardio. I just wanted to pass along that if you have a Pacemaker, those devices will NOT work to identify an arrhythmia!! The pacemaker's signal interferes with the watch or external device as it seeks to recognize whether you're in Afib. I called Apple and they said that the fine print actually states that. So much for reading the fine print!!
Please don't purchase a device just so you can self diagnose an arrhythmia. When in doubt, call 911 or your cardiologist for instructions. I love my Apple watch, but I loved it more when I didn't have a pacemaker. Maybe in the future Apple or some other tech company will figure a workaround! Remember, If you don't feel well, call 911!!

Thanks for the great info! I've had Cardiologists who blame everything on my lungs (former smoker) and Pulmonologists who blame it all on my heart. If I could have just gathered them into a single room and let them duke it out, I might have had a better outcome, LOL!! Medicine has become so micromanaged, it's hard to find Doctors today that will look at the WHOLE patient, not just the area of concern related to their specialty. I see my primary cardiologist this week and will see if he has any new insights and answers to my long list of questions that I manage to have for him at each visit. So far sleep apnea is the only problem I don't have... yet! Thanks again for the info re Dr Natale and the Pulsed Field trials. As patients we really need to be our own best advocates in order to obtain the best outcomes! And to also stay positive through it all!

Cathy, thanks for sharing your experience, and I can sympathize with your condition, even if I am not in it. There is a member calling herself SusanD on affibbers.org forum who has a truly horrendous history, and she's still kickin'. In fact, I think she just moved from the USA to Great Britian...but not certain. Anyway, after literally umpteen interventions, and living at an ER for weeks at a time over the past four years, she is home with a permanently destroyed AV node and SA node and she has a pacemaker.

As Carey, the moderator on that forum warns people repeatedly, and he had six ablations over about four years, you MUST find the very best EP around and get on that person's schedule. There are scores of good EPS here and there, but the more difficult cases must get on the lists of the best in the business, even if it means travel.

And yes, pulmonary vein hypertension is a problem with some patients, especially after heavy catheterization. This is why the Pulsed Field Trials are under way, and newer methods are being tested all the time to avoid damaging the aesophagus and the Vagus nerve.

I can't tell you how many excellent EPs there are in the USA, quite a few, but the one we urge people to contact is Dr. Andrea Natale at the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute in Austin. He was trained by the vaunted Dr. Pierre Jais in France, and he continues to train many highly competent EPs.

Cathy, I was fit all my adult life. I don't know how well I 'lived', but I think I ate reasonably, don't smoke, don't drink much at all, and I was a competitive runner with a rest heart rate of about 42 BPM. One day, at the end of a 10Km 'garbage' run, meaning just getting a run in, no goal or training in mind, I felt weak and my legs felt like lead. Turns out I had commenced a history of AF. After multiple tests of all kinds, all that was left was to go to an overnight sleep lab. Bingo! I had apnea....and not just mild or moderate, but severe! My heart had finally thrown up its hands and said, 'Fine, if that's the way it has to be, I'll stop playing nice.'

Again, thanks for your informative post, and for sharing what must be a worrisome existence. I hope you find relief.