Five Days in Heaven

Sunday, September 29th, at 4:10am a drug called tikosyn converted my heart from atrial fibrillation to normal sinus rhythm after I was admitted to UNC Medical Center with low blood pressure and way too fast pulse rate. I’d had 24/7 afib for a long time, and a heavy afib “burden” (ratio of afib time/normal rhythm time) before that had kept me dragged down for years. So the switch back to normal rhythm was the very definition of pleasant surprise.

The five days in normal rhythm this week were blissful.  I’d forgotten how totally wonderful it feels to be in normal health. I walked, rode my bicycle, and did the other things allowed by the doctor as my wounds heal from a right thoracotomy epicardial ablation procedure my surgeon performed on September 19th.

But now I’m back in the “oh oh” state, and if I’m loaded with digoxin and more carvedilol I’ll be in the precurser state I was in almost exactly a week ago when I suddenly had to prop myself against a wall while I determined just how dizzy I was going to get. Ugh.

I have no choice but to “hang in there.” I’ll upload the detailed EKG data being captured by a Medtronic  “loop recorder” implanted near my left collar bone, send an email to one of the specialists, and be caller number 1 when the electrophysiologist’s office opens at 8:30. And this time, unlike last Friday morning, I won’t eat any breakfast. So if they want to do a cardioversion I won’t have to lay on a gurney for eight hours while my stomach empties.

But I’m almost entirely the same guy that went to bed with sinus rhythm, and my new found enthusiasm for life is still clear in my memory. Hopefully I’ll still be back to work on two embedded computer projects soon as I “stay stable” until I’m ready for the final step of my afib cure, an endocardial ablation procedure.