the thread of ATRIAL FIBBING

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 🙌

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jSUtkUyuiK8/Tc13_bGMJsI/AAAAAAAALnY/UHcdt2yaU5Q/s400/Fibber%2BMcGee%2BAnd%2BMolly.jpg

just saw this, thx wins :)

yes, its actual real public birthday has been making me combination happy and sad tbh

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

― mark s, Saturday, March 14, 2020

I think this is right

(dad had his pacemaker operation on Thursday, but even as an out patient op I find it odd that they went ahead with it. Was complaining on Saturday of bruising and that the external monitor wasn't finding a signal, but otherwise fine)

all the best koogs

in AF and me news: patient (me) reports no change, all seems fine

a couple of nights now i've woken with the flutter at some intensity -- where generally sleeping damps it down.

the first i couldn't get back to sleep properly and when i did get up (earlier than intended) i discovered i'd forgotten to take my beta blockers the evening before and evening plus morning dose sorted it well enough.

the second it sorted itself out by itself and i went back to sleep and slept well and late. in each case during the wakefulness i lay worrying that i would have to go back into hospital to get it regularised (which there are now other reasons to not want happen). anyway fingers x-ed it's mostly a mix of anxiety and intense dreams.

like i feel absolutely fine and normal right now but during the wakefulness i could somehow sense the beginnings of every CV19 symptom lurking but i know this is a very normal state of mind for everyone awake at 4 in the moming

lol yes :/

since this began ive hugely favoured lying on my right over my left side when trying to get to sleep: on my left (heart side down) my flutter was more evident and this made me anxious and less likely to sleep, but also i'd get a thing where as i did drop off i'd often seem to get a heart skip and this -- real or imagined -- woke me up again in a panic.

now i find i'm *entirely* favouring sleeping on my right (heart side up) bcz the other way seems actively to exacerbate the flutter? i mean i know yr ribs protect yr heart from being actually squished but

anyway this is all so borderline between symptoms real and dremt that i never get good answers when i ask the specialists or (don't do this) try and google it

every now and then i wake early bcz the flutter seems high, like i just necked an espresso in my sleep to jolt myself awake -- and cant get back to sleep

(this time after a stressful dream abt conflict at work) (knowingly caused by me i might add lol)

a weird thing is that caffeine seems not to heighten the flutter, quite the opposite in fact

lol i just got called to be told the revised date for my repeat fibrillation is exactly a fortnight from now, which GOOD i guess but also uh oh (in hospital but not overnight unless something goes awry)

Hope this goes smoothly!

ok so i went into barts cardiology on monday at 10am and smoothly is how it went and i am now out and in day two of recovery post-cardioversion (which i called a "repeat fibrillation above lol: not its name no, fibrillation is the name of the monster) -- in fact despite lots of boring waits* i was out by 6.30pm same day

i: barts was eerily calm and unpeopled compared to any other time i've been there -- never more than two other ppl on the ward, waiting either for cardioversions themselves (very quick procedure) or pacemaker box changes (longer op tho perfectly routine)
ii: nurses etc all cheerful and professional, not at all a stressed environment -- i was due to be sorted super-quick but apparently then bumped by an emergency post heart-op arrival who'd fainted at newham and been transferred… most of my entertainment all day was listening to phone discussion which of newham and barts needed to hold a post-op bad for this person
iii: also eavesdropped: that barts had not had an actual official COVID patient since the bulge in march, tho of course they were testing everyone on entry
iv: thx to newham fainter i wasn't seen till 3ish having arrived at 10 but as noted the procedure is p quick: wheel me to a lab, sedate me, zap me -- sedation wasn;t full anaesthetic, so i was conscious but very far removed from anything going on. my memory of the actual electric shock is a comically cartoonish silent bump in which every item in the room flew up the air and settled again. i suspect this is not what happened.
v: one zap and my heart was normal sinus waves again, first time in 18 months i think. they told me before that they'd try three times before giving up: but it was just one and worked, so hurrah! the first cardioversion i had -- possibly discussed upthread -- i was fully asleep, they tried it three times and it didn't work ("you have a stubborn heart mr s") and i also got a mild red iron-shaped scorch mark on my back from a shock-paddle lol, tho a bit of savlon sorted this out quickly. this time i dodged all of this and was back on the ward and fully awake (no driving or heavy machinery** for 24 hrs!) by 4pm.
vi: so now we just wait and see how long before it reverts to weird shit, 3 days 3 months 3 years? it may not revert! but i suspect it probably will -- something in my structures pushes towards it. but fingers x-ed…
vii: anyway i am back and beefing calmly as i normally do, hullo ilx

*yes i took in a cpy of the LRB to while away the time, no it never left my bag
**what does heavy machinery actually mean in this context? (i will never google "heavy machinery")

nice to have you back, sir :)

that heavy machinery in full

https://d2rd7etdn93tqb.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ripley-power-loader-aliens-051617.jpg

👍

I read this thread a couple days ago and was hoping they weren’t re-fibrillation you!

genuinely feeling better since the cardioversion: less tired and sluggish, much less sense that my heart is like skittering and bumping. i'm off caffeine again (my choice, the consultant says it's not relevant but for all its benefits it makes me jittery and anxious)

the arrhythmia may come back (it may already be back, i often wasn't aware of it) but the flutter seems to have been banished for now

i'm on one less med (no DIGOXIN) and wd like to be on lower BISOPROLOL tho this probably won't happen till after my next review (by phone app! tho i think i'll imagine i'll need an ECG leafing up to it, which will be hard to do over the phone)

the one downside is that i've had a near-constant headache for a week now -- really bad on monday till i dosed up with anadin extra (paracetamol aka acetaminophen, aspirin, plus caffeine). so the headache might just be caffeine withdrawal (plus weather pressure effects), or a med side effect (RAMIPRIL is mildly head-ache inducing) or maybe my increased heart power is pumping too much blood into my head lol

aside from monday it's tolerable though -- meaning i can work through

(meaning i am staring at a screen all day: also famously headache-inducing)

i'm sorry about the headache, mark, i really sympathise with you there. on the other hand... BISOPROLOLOLOLOL

seems to be fine today tbh, i think it's weather exacerbated by caffeine withdrawal

so it turns out that six months on my heart is still in good sinus rhythm (per an ECG last week) so my arrhythmia nurses are happy for me to reduce my beta blockers -- which with luck will mean feeling less tired day-on-day.

this is excellent news! i was somewhat resigned to the arrhythmia returning -- it always has done before -- NOT THIS TIME, SO FAR

(rewarding myself with a cup of coffee, living dangerously with that caffeine bump which the experts says is unrelated to all this)

(ok it's more like four months than six i guess)

I have Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome and may have to have this fibbing thingy done at some point, it may go away though, and I don't feel like I've experienced any real symptoms for more than a year, and the tachycardia used to be pretty bad, so idk, maybe it went away by itself, have heard that happens. I do have one coffee first thing every morning which seems to be ok, but any caffeine at all after midday and I will not be able to sleep until maybe 4am.

best wishes CaAL :)

this last week i have been a bit puzzled that i seem not to be dropping off to sleep easily -- eg much late-night scrolling of random wikipedia pages to no evident purpose (the somewhat arbitrary list of unsolved murders since the bog ppl to someone earlier this year, the tale of the michelin man, did you know he once sued ilxor user MOMUS)

well as i finally drop my beta blockers to one quarter what they were three weeks ago as suggested by my my arrhythmia nurses above i just realised this is the reason: i am currently on half and will soon be on one quarter my beta blockers! i assumed i would be less physically tired but wobs is a bad week to judge that perhaps. needs less sleep feels a less handy improvement at least initially and it will probably wear off before i find a way to harness it (im not actually getting younger) but it is mildly exhilarating, like that first time when i went onto the atkins diet and more or less skipped sleep for a week without blowback! (a thrill never recaptured)

in conclusion the human body is weird, don't have one if you can avoid it

(adding: the sleeplessness predates the two whole bottles of red wine i consumed one on eve one on day so it's not that despite the rosso being a stimulant for me at least when i haven't had much in a while)

very palpy last night, and tachy today -- resting pulse 140-ish just now? beta-blockers prob too low too soon, upping them a bit again >:(

(this after six months of being nicely steady, which is annoying)

ffs! best of luck with the beta blockers, mark

my doctor in china put me on beta blockers then my doctor in the UK insisted I come off them. alcohol seems to lead to more palpitations than caffeine for me for some reason, I will admit the more I find out about this stuff the more I realise I know nothing, suppose most things are like that.

i've gone back to half-dose from quarter-dose of my betas (half that is of what i was on for a year+) and wll stick at half-dose for a while i think

my pulse-rate still seems a bit up (116) but tbh i never know when a sensible time to take it is (eating always bumps it up for a while for example)

anyway i feel much better and more energetic again

tapering seems like a good plan

flutter is definitely back lads >:(

i had an ECG -- a tale in itself lol -- in advance of my heart review this coming monday and they were briefly p keen to keep me in (as happened before upthread) (heartrate fast tho not as fast as it was upthread): anyway luckily they relented when (a) as always i have no other symptoms (no chestpains, no difficulty breathing) and (b) they knew i'd be talking my specialist v soon

i p much knew it was back -- i could feel it skipping around at night and i've woken up a few times w/it racing (tho everyone gets that and i've always had sleep paralysis issues) -- but i crossed my fingers and hoped self-diagnosis was inaccurate (which tbf it is). i put my beta blocker dosage up again -- not to full wack -- so i'm mildly feeling fatigue effects (a mix of beta blockers, heart flailing away needlessly, being 61 in a month's time lol)

upside: flutter is considered less severe than the fibbing of the thread's original title, so we have in a sense progessed -- during the ablation of two years back they couldn't tap out all all the misfiring spots and i suspect the ones left untreated are combining to cause the flutter. flutters are more likely spontaneously to self-correct and the cardioversion zapped it back into behaving well for at least six and i think more like nine months

my specialist insists that caffeine is not an issue (i'm back off it but every time i have a demanding editing job i will be back off the wagon)

anyway i'm a bit fed up obviously but symptomatically it is fine tbh (some tiredness, but def not as bad as two years back) and on monday i guess we will know what ways forward there are (upside: i just got my second vax yesterday so i wd be reasonably safe for further procedures if this is what they suggest, and more to the point unanxious abt them)

(the ECG tale is that basically i had to organise it myself and i am not my own GP so this involved a *lot* of boundary-busting pestering and checking) (including being given someone's direct email -- i think by by mistake -- which i immediately exploited with vigour)

(in the end this all worked and i was lucky in the admin ppl i reached out to)

(including being given someone's direct email -- i think by by mistake -- which i immediately exploited with vigour)

First Boris' phone number, now his email, what are they playing at at No. 10? All the best, mark!