We've known for a couple months that something was wrong. My heart rate was getting really high on my runs, but quite low on my off days. My blood pressure was no longer responding to the meds, so when my doc ran out of ideas, she referred me to a cardiologist. The cardiologist added fists full of pills and they finally started bringing the numbers down.
Meanwhile, a routine blood test indicated anemia, so my doc ordered a colonoscopy to look for a bleed. Nothing unusual except one benign polyp. Then came the endoscope to check out the upper bowel. No bleeds, no goblins which left one more magic trick.
There is this thing called a pill-cam. It's a big, big capsule with a light on one end and a web-cam inside that you swallow and carry around for a day. It talks to a belt pack that records what must be the most boring video in the world. It takes a couple weeks for some poor schmuck to assess the whole thing. No troubles found, no answer to the continuing mystery of the anemia. On the other hand, you get to keep the camera. I elected to simply let that opportunity pass.
But part of the prep for this robot magic was a sonogram. We had to be sure i had no blockages that would trap the camera. They found none. But what they did find, by accident, I suppose, was a weird little hop in my heartbeat. The report caught my cardiologist's attention, and her EKG revealed that I had developed atrial fibrillation or A-fib. It's a skip or flurry in the rhythm of your heart that makes all kinds of evil stuff much more likely. Stroke. Heart attack. Embolism. She immediately put me on blood thinners and scheduled an appointment for something called a cardioversion procedure. This was several weeks ago, so my memory may be blurry, but here is what I remember.
I went to the cardiologist's office, was escorted to a dressing room where I stripped and put on a robe. A nurse put an IV port in my arm, drew blood, and after a brief consult with the the docs who would be knocking me out and running the show, I was rolled to a lab that looked an awful lot like somebody's office. There was a desk at one end, and several nurses were placing pads around my torso, while several others had a fairly animated conversation about schedule changes and the length of their shifts. Finally, the big cheese came in and explained once again that they were going to try to shock my heart back into rhythm. Somebody injected something wonderful into my IV and I heard an electronic voice advising the team to connect the pads. It was the same fellow as the one in the AED we use at the Y when somebody had a heart attack. "What a gig," I thought, "doing voice overs for machines that save people's lives." I wondered how long it would take the drugs to knock me out.
Then I woke up. "All done, Mr Johnson." No wonder people take drugs for fun.
Everything went fine, just like it was supposed to. I was back in rhythm and as soon as the glorious chemicals wore off, I took a cab home.
The next few days went wonderfully. I had meds to keep my heart on the beat. I had energy, My depression lifted. People in my classes noticed that I seemed like my old self. Then on a Tuesday night, I started to drag. I finished teaching my last class and was gasping at the front desk waiting to close down the Y when my Apple Watch buzzed. My A-fib had returned.
The cardiologist said it was time to meet the electrophysiologist. The next step? Cardiac Ablation. That's what they did to me yesterday morning. I will tell you that story in Part Two.
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