the thread of ATRIAL FIBBING

was missing you and didn't realise where you were almost until they let you out because I am oblivious. Glad you're street legal again, extended term hospital is a weird combination of inconveniences and looking after which I sometimes pine for cos big baby

I've got a friend who's going thru this at the moment, has just had an ablation and is struggling with avoiding alcohol and feeling knackered at the moment, telling him about your experiences has felt helpful so thanks

Glad to hear all of this (from the ended end of the experience) - I'm sure you've got more local contact, but I'm a 15-minute cycle away if you need a stuff-carrier at any point.

Good to hear you're out & the staff and other patients provided ample entertainment and there was raspbery jelly. lol @ the soup nazi - a jacket potato with tuna: "what kind of food is that for a man??" - one of my go-to cheap caff meals, I'm obviously not a real man :(

i cd've understand it if he'd gone out and bought a doner tbf

yes that was a double take - "this mound of carbs and flesh is unmanly, i must have... soup".

Nah, I’m with potato guy because canned tuna is VILE, and jacket potatoes have a place in the universe beside a really nice steak. The topped jacket you people call lunch, pffffft.

"really nice steak" was definitely not on the menu

Canned tuna is a big part of my diet. Feeling seen rn.

Wish I could get with canned tuna, because it would be so convenient and healthy. But the taste is just to strong and unpleasant to me, and bears no relation as far as I can tell to a home-cooked tuna steak

with notable exceptions the other patients were also fine

— anti-tuna soup-guy is one notable exception: he was fine with me (he entirely ignored me) but he was a pain in the neck for the nursing staff
— the other was a cartoonishly glaswegian* alcoholic, in i think to dry out (tho why on the cardiology ward i can't say)? anyway his approach to this was to get dressed every morning and go out drinking in nearby pubs or the park, and then come back to the ward late evenings extremely aggressive and wanting an argument. after a few days he was persuaded that the experiment wasn't working and he truculently discharged himself

*language-wise i hasten to add, glaswegians are lovely when they're not notable exceptions: with him everything was threatened batterings and cunt and "who are you looking at?" followed by unconvincing apologies when staff pointed out this was unacceptable behaviour

My canned tuna hate comes direct from someone trying to feed me either tuna salad or tuna casserole when I was a kid having chemotherapy. Tuna and sweetcorn on a jacket potato is not a food concept that brings me comfort; it looks like puketato.

never fancy tuna on a jacket potato tbf but a good tuna mayo sandwich is sometimes just the thing

they give you a menu and take orders, so you only end up with something you absolutely don't want via delivery error or via arriving too late to order and being given a meal that was cooked but not wanted (my guess is soup guy was the latter)

post-consultant update:

— it wasn't my consultant it was a flunky >:(
— none of the info had come thru from homerton to barts yet so i had to fill them in on the whole thing (luckily i also had a copy of the post-homerton report)
— in conclusion, steady as she goes viz

(i) my heart's rhythm is now reliably regular, so the ablation did actually do what it was meant to
(ii) i seem to be experiencing ATRIAL TACHYCARDIA, i.e. my atrial chambers are beating fast they they shd be
(iii) when they were in there zapping the misfiring nerves they may have missed some, bcz the relevant area is dilated
(iv) i am still in the "blanking period" after the ablation, the 12-ish weeks when things can actually get worse rather than better lol (i don't think 'd been told this quite so bluntly before now, just that "you may experience palpitations") (i threw my version of the homerton's doctor's theory outlined above at him, and he didn't demur)
(v) so this may just sort itself out without further intervention (tho meds stay raised for now)
(vi) see the consultant again in december to decide future action, including possibly coming off digoxin and reducing bisoprolil again
(vii) if i do have further episodes while on these damping meds, then maybe another ablation? except there will once again be "blanking period" risks, so this has to be taken into account
(viii) none of this wiil actually kill me, and i'm on blood thinners which will fend off strokes
(ix) so here we are -- me paying attention and them aware is a good combo, apparently

all fine as it goes -- i went to check up with the nurse abt my blood pressure meds (and in fact adjust them) and she noted that the excellent set of bloods i had from my stay in the hospital made clear that everything else, kidneys, platelets, cholesterol levels, i forget what else, is EXCELLENT. So that was nice.

We also discovered that the humming noise of the blood-pressure reading machine actually makes me tense and anxious and drives up my heart rate -- without me being aware of this (I assumed I was totally chill about everything all the time but this entire adventure has revealed to me I'm actually quite stressed much of the time -- and that taking my own blood pressure is one of the things* that stresses me)

anyway there's a another machine with a squeezy bulb which for some reason stresses me less so we used that

*being on-line is almost certainly another thing that stresses me but i will never log off :(

i loved the squeezy bulb as a child, do they still put the armband on you

mark supplies his own armband AND jackboots iirc

gold spiked helmet

Thank you for this thread, my boyfriend had what was probably a bit of atrial flutter last weekend and it really freaked us both out.

His health insurance is a very low level of coverage, so he refused to go to the ER on the basis that it would probably end up costing him his full deductible of $4000 and the med stop nearest his town doesn't accept his insurance at all. So, so far he's done nothing. Which doesn't seem satisfactory.

"Atrial fibbing" is something your cheating heart would do.

first full pot of coffee made in my own kitchen since the ablation, as i'm on major deadline today and need to be fully focused

(hence posting like an mf on ilx obv)

(will update my condition when this draft is sent, i hope today)

retroactive update: so on 30 dec i had a big post-ablation consultation -- hoping to hear that (a) the ablation had broadly worked after a hiccup that sent me back to hospital during the so-called BLANKING PERIOD and (b) i could change and reduce my medication, esp. my beta blockers (BISOPROLOL) which absolutely leave me tireder than i feel i ought to be feeling, also the RAMIPRIL (for blood pressure) leaves me headachey and the only thing that honestly counters the headache is the caffeine in ANADIN EXTRA (but caffeine brings its own problems)

(a) consultant notes that the ablation did NOT really work, that i've ended up post-procedure with ATRIAL FLUTTER which is contained and controlled by my meds as is
(b) meds not to change for now
(c) in a few weeks another CARDIOVERSION) (stop heart and restart via electric shock) to see if it can be jumpstarted into its proper rhythm -- so far cardioversions haven't been effective at all, my heart has been described as "healthy but stubborn" (which is good i guess)
(d) after that we can revisit my level of meds
(e) consultant muttered more or less to self "i'd like to bring you at least a couple of years of normal heart function" -- dude don't say the dispiriting stuff out loud plz
(f) but realistically i am caught between two consultants of very different opinion -- one (who did the last ablation) who thinks the procedures are basically a waste of time and i shd be controlling all this with meds and my life can be long and productive that way, and mine, who is gung-ho abt procudures but also now i feel disappointed (probably in me, for not being a success for his appproach) (he is nice in person, has a good and funny consultant manner)

the tiredness i guess i can learn to live with: after all i'm going to be 60 this year and i believe that's a thing! the headaches are a bore but i probably need to lose weight to tackle blood pressure and to reduce intake of RAMIPRIL, and exercise is a bit counter-indicated by tiredness, which is physical as much as mental.

(during the return to coffee noted above i was pleased to note i was not getting palps or other amplified symptoms -- to start i felt p good in fact, focused and un-achey etc. toward the end i was getting the usual morning sliuggishness and coming off caffeine i got the usual headaches, which have only just now dissipated tbrr, a week after requitting. basically my coffee counters the beta-blocker tiredness at point of consumption but then leaves me even more tired later plus less likely to sleep soundly. off coffee i sleep well and increasingly sleeping well is a deep pleasure for an ageing fellow)

Sorry to hear this Mark, and I especially sympathise with the last clause.

when it's available and possible, sleeping well is basically one of life's great gifts.

after next cardioversion - if it fails - will funny yet dispiriting procedure-happy consultant perhaps start to take view of the other one?

i think the alternatives are further ablations or controlling it with meds

further ablations *ma*y finally jab all the misfiring buttons in the right way to shut off the misfiring, but risk further misbehaviour during the blanking period (which is basically when the scar tissue isn;lt yet grown in to muffle the misfiring)

meds: when i mentioned the tiredness to the other consultant (as my main reason to want to go ahead with the ablation) he said that different beta blockers might not have the tiredness effect? so i guess that's what i need to look into

what is a

-checks text from mmac-

heart echo check

and why

-double checks text from mmac-

do "they" want me to get one?

mmm possibly "they" are reading my posts all week, tbf

Echocardiogram. Dunno. But it is painless!

the suggestion i need one isnt!

this is a hard q to answer w/o knowing more abt yr earlier communications and interactions with them -- or did they just slide into yr DMs on twitter?

ecgs are useful for many many observsations in and around the heart obviously -- sometimes just to rule out something where you have a symptom that's very likely benign but might be an indicator of something it wd be smart to pre-empt? (i have gone from being a total snowlake abt this organ -- WHAT IF IT JUST STOPS! -- to very admiring of its rugged meaty pertinacity -- OMG IT JUST KEEPS ON GOING! -- but mine has been routinely determined, after many of same, to be v-healthy-if-somewhat-wayward…

on foot of an uncle, completely bolloxed after a life of hectic drinking, showing up something in a scan recently

issue could be related to his chosen career but could also have a genetic element so the icy finger of probability has poked out a text as detailed above and hit send, the dick

my mum was convinced i'd be male-pattern bald by 35 based on genetics, she looked at my tousled head aged 45 (me) and said "that's the one thing i've ever been wrong about"

it's a lottery is what it is and peeking inside the works can do little harm unless yr a worrier

coincidentally last week my doctor strongly recommended that I get one soon based on a health issue last january, which could either be anemia (probably likely, my iron is historically bad but I thought it was under control) or some other unrelated heart issue

I've had intermittent atrial fibrillation (lone atrial fib) for 12 years now. It was originally treated with a right heart ablation. That is not now considered the definitive treatment, but that in combination with flecainide it has kept me mostly free of it

The weird thing is that my older brother has had almost exactly the same experience

does anyone else run around bumping into people for an hour three times a week

i somewhat dread being informed that is a thing not to do anymore

5-a-side? Dodgems?

the polycule regrets

xp think of a hybrid version basically yeah

so it's being said ppl with heart issues are at risk covid-style but i don't know if this includes fibbing? i keep being told my heart is basically v healthy, it's just like keeping time badly

Sigh. I don't know either but my bf had an extremely scary day of recurring episodes two weeks ago, potentially connected to working out at the gym? With no chance of insurance anytime soon he was considering flying to another country and paying for private care just to find out wtf is wrong with him but that's off for now, so...very worried, yes. My sense is no one really knows much re covid so far?

i was on a AF mailing list until december which gathered all kinds of info -- no idea how reliable -- but (a) it all just went into a mailbox i never looked at and (b) i seemed to have been signed off it since jan so i'm none the wiser

so anyway i am lined up for a cardioversion in a few weeks (no date yet) which in routine times is an unproblematic and unrisky heart procedure, in-out in an afternoon, at worst overnight if they schedule you for an evening op, just an electric bump to see if they can nudge it back into proper rhythm for a while

i'm guessing it will simply be postponed bcz urgent stuff will be overwhelming the system in all other directions (tho barts doesn't have an A&E so maybe not) (except my last one was at homerton, which very much does).

anyway i guess wait and see what i'm told -- maybe this is how i will find out how at risk i am

In an example of terrible timing my dad's just been told he'll need a pacemaker fitted within the month. Doctor asked him if there'd been any sudden deaths in the family...

yikes, best of luck koogs

He had a tiny stroke before Christmas which affected his peripheral vision and he had to surrender his driving licence for a year (at least) so now he spends even more time watching the sport on TV. Or would if it hadn't all been cancelled. He needs a hobby.

Good luck to all.

Yup.

barts just called to say that my prep appointment next week for the upcoming repeat cardioversion is indeed postponed, until when they don't know

not startled to learn this, and in fact somewhat relieved

Hope fibbers get a bit of clarity soon (and remain healthy!)

Mark today fb reminded me that it is a year since ur book and attendant goodies arrived at my door 🙌