I was diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation 5 years ago. It was the 29th September. Hard to forget the date if it is the day after your birthday. It came on about 2pm while I was at work. Persisted up until about 7 when my girlfriend (now wife) told me to go to the Dr. He called it straight away and sent me to the hospital. I was admitted through Emergency and was hooked up to all the gear and given iv meds to try and make it revert. It took until about 2am in the morning until it did revert. At it's peak my pulse hit 198bpm while I was laying perfectly still. It was and probably is the scariest experience of my life. I had no idea what was happening why it was happening what the repercussions might be or how to stop it from happening. The next morning a Dr saw me and gave me several prescriptions and sent me on my way. I went to the pharmacy and was stunned to find that I was expected to inject myself with blood thinning agents. I don't like other people injecting me let alone doing it myself. I went and saw my Dr and he showed me how to do and administered the first dose and i imagined going back to see him every day for a week but I eventually built up the fortitude to jab myself in the stomach. After a week of that I had a line of purple bruises across my stomach!!!
I first saw my cardiologist who is also an EP about a month or so after that episode. He prescribed some meds and said that he wanted to monitor it for a few years before we discussed ablation. I had numerous flutters but no real episodes over the next 12 months. I had more panic attacks than anything else during this time.
Then we got back from a 3 week overseas trip and the following day probably due to exhaustion I had another episode. I went back to the hospital and went through everything again the same as the first time. It took about 12 hours to revert again. I saw my cardiologist again and he upped the meds and said that we would continue to monitor it.
It has steadily gotten worse in terms of more episodes since then but the episodes don't usually last that long. I would guess that in 5 years I have had maybe 7 episodes that have lasted 12 hours.
The last time I saw my cardiologist he sent me away to think about the ablation and I have spent the past 9 months thinking about anything but the operation. I made an appointment recently to see him in September and discuss things further then. The idea of the operation scares me terribly but the idea of spending the rest of my days sedated is starting to look less and less attractive.
I got married in June and i think now I want to get on with the rest of my life so i am more open to looking into things.
I have an appointment with a Chinese Medicine specialist tomorrow to see if he can help reduce the occurrences of the episodes either through Chinese Medicine or acupuncture.
Thats the story so far
:)