McHale,

This is the 1st time I see "soft spoken" and "Italian" are used in the same sentence, and it even includes "Texas". Wow! Ooooookay, LOL.

You are lucky, he must be excellent. I am almost two years after my ablation and all my triggers are coming back. That was exactly what I was afraid of before deciding to get an ablation. I managed my afib for over 10 years just by finding and avoiding my triggers. I am almost back to the same situation now, ouch.

It is nice to hear you are off even the blood thinner. Excellent :-)

Scott

Andreas Natale
Simply the Best
Around 10,000 ablations under his belt and many of those are for stubborn persistent permanent kind of AFIB
Throw statistics out the window when it comes to this man he makes his own.
Look him up here but especially on the other forums!

McHale

Search Natale

Hang in there IslandLuvr. :(

I have only been at this for only a little over a year, at this time ablation not an option. I realize I have adjusted quite well, in fact today I was actually thinking it had been awhile since I was in afib until I looked at some records and realized it was bad on the 23rd and the 19th.

I have been under some extreme stress as my Mom broke her hip replacement from 1995 so had a new one and the femur bone rebuilt. At 87 it was rough but we had no choice other than let her lie there and die. There were things I needed to do and had no choice to do them to the best I could. In the last month since it happened there was only one day I had to stay home due to afib. The rest of the time I just went on with my day at a slower pace. For me it is doable.

What helps me more is just not getting upset and realizing it is temporary. I watch my triggers and take my meds and realize this will not kill me. Thank my stars I had a lot of training to keep panic attacks in check, so I just use some of the same techniques.

Hope you get it all done and things calm down for you.

laurab

First, let me apologize if this sounds a bit preachy. I don't mean for it to be. I hate it when someone else gets that way to me but I don't know how else to relate my own experience.

I haven't had the kind of problems you have with afib. I've had two full blown episodes that lasted 17 and 26 hours. I'm not sure what my "triggers" are. I assume that they can be related to stimulants including caffeine, so I limit the amount of caffeine. It could also be related to my running, but giving that up would take a lot more than what I've experienced so far.

My approach to afib is different from a lot of other peoples'. Basically, I'm not retreating from what I want to do. Afib is a bother, but not usually a big bother for me. It makes me feel like I'm running pretty hard when I'm only walking moderately. I sleep well when I've had afib, in part because it doesn't cause me much stress. If it put me in pain, or even worse, constant pain, I'd be distressed, but not much.

I've dealt with a lot of pain and I've dealt with long periods of feeling breathless. When you run very long distances, acceptance of both of those things is a part of being an endurance athlete. I dislike, immensely, anything that interferes with my ability to judge how my body is feeling, so I view pain as an important message of how I'm doing. The absence of pain is very positive for me. Being breathless is an association with working harder than I should. So I slow down. Not a bad thing.

As an example of how I came to this point, after suffering through plantar faciitis on both feet for about a year, I quit fighting it. I accepted the pain and the fact that it was bad enough that I awoke after about 2 hours of sleep every single night. I accepted that if I was lucky, I'd be able to got back to sleep an hour or a few hours more on any given night. I felt blessed that it was just pain and not something that could kill me or prevent me from being able to function. I was pretty sure that it would eventually go away. It did. But I accepted that I did not know how bad it could get or that I was in this for the long term. It lasted 2.5 years. It just prepared me for pain that I've now had that was a lot worse than plantar faciitis.

The knowledge I've gained from this group about afib has allowed me to understand the real risk I face, mostly stroke. Since that is easily addressed with an anti-coagulant, I feel relatively safe. Afib does not usually interrupt my sleep. If it does, it's easy for me to go back to sleep.

I understand your fear. I've had it. I've been frustrated too over my body not functioning as I'd like. What I have now is a feeling of being blessed to be able to still experience a lot of the good that the world still has to offer. If I could still function when I was in constant pain (including debilitating pain), I can deal with afib. We all experience things differently. The things that bother me the most are not physical. The physical things I have come to accept. It is those other things that keep me awake at night. They give me nightmares. They cause me anger and frustration. I will leave those "other things" unsaid, but there is no pill or ablation to cure them.

We are all here looking for some answers, and I'm afraid I don't have any. I believe that in this instance, you are the one with the answers. My best wishes to you. I hope you find what you seek because I know just how frustrating it can be.

Todd

Im curious why ablation is off the table for you?

Afib tends to get progressively worse and if you wait too long it can be harder to fix with an ablation. I went from afib once every few weeks to almost daily in 12 months. Rythmol worked pretty well at that point but still had afib episodes. So I had an ablation in June. It was pretty much a pain free experience. So far so good...no more metoprolol, no more rythmol, my mind is cleared up, running 4 miles on the treadmill. I would recommend an ablation to anyone who cant live with the symptoms.

Todd, I appreciate your post, but you are assuming a lot. I was an athlete for 20 years in a very grueling contact sport. Trust me, I know pain, and I know how to work through it.

I think what you're missing here is that a fib strikes everyone differently. Some people have no symptoms, and don't even know they have it.. While others have really severe symptoms.

On a scale of one to ten, I am around an 8 or 9. My pulse once shot up to 230 bum and stayed there for two hours. I know take a metoprolol when that happens.

My heart races and pounds. It feels like giant fish flopping in my chest. And I basically feel like awful. I get dizzy and extremely cold and start to shiver, like my body is shutting down.

This is not "fear".. It is not "in my head"... I know pain. I have been injured many times in my athletic career.. Including three knee surgeries and major back surgery... A torn hamstring.. And multiple contusions.

Although it sounds like you get light to moderate symptoms.. Count yourself lucky you don't get severe episodes.

Ohio, you are one of the lucky ones.. And it's not even been a year, so you don't know how successful the procedure was. I hope it's permanent for you.

To me, ablation is too much of a crap shoot. The odds are definitely not in anyone's favor, and the risks vs benefits aren't worth it to me. Burning and scarring the heart is not an option I would consider. But if I had afib everyday, I might not be saying that.

Hopefully, in the near future, a fib will be better understood and medical science can get to the root of the problem.

Ohioafib: AFIB does NOT get progressively worse, it more times than not, gets more frequent. Fibrosis has been discovered to occur independent of AFIB as it can progress after a successful ablation. As Ultratodd says, STROKE is the main concern. I will add my 2 cents:

Symptoms do not cause stroke, but they are a constant reminder of AFIB and stroke risk. Pain/symptoms = something is wrong. I understand that even though I have zero symptoms and no difficulties with my prescriptions: Pradaxa and Bystolic. They go down just like vitamins I take.

Of course, if you have a constantly high heart rate, heart failure can be a concern. Those that come in and out of AFIB frequently can have a hard time because the rate control and rhythm control drugs affect you differently when you need them than when you don't. For example, a betablocker can really slow down a person in NSR, but make a person in AFIB feel better. Rhythm drugs will certainly make you feel better when they convert you to NSR, but don't when you are already in NSR. Anticoagulants do their job without regard to how you feel. They cause many anxiety because of the "advertised" side effects. They also limit some things you can do (you can't race cars professionally or continue with your boxing career for example).

Those that take these drugs as a PIP (pill in the pocket where you only take them when in AFIB) have the most work to do. They have to monitor themselves to see if they are having silent AFIB and suffer when they are very symptomatic... and then take their meds.

Which brings me back to the original comment to Ohioafib and my final comment. AFIB tends to become more frequent, and if progressing to chronic, becomes more asymptomatic.

All we can do is try to feel well, try to live a long healthy life, not focus on risks, and live our lives fully. I am glad I am asymptomatic, don't switch back and forth frequently from NSR to AFIB (when stroke risk is highest), am chronic, and my AFIB is well managed. Ablation (and probably something we don't know about on the horizon) will provide a better solution, particularly for chronic (longstanding persistent) afibbers... but right now, there is not a solution with high odds. My situation isn't urgent like those with wildly fluctuating heart rates and terrible symptoms... but I certainly understand the frustration and urgency to find a solution... but remember, if you had no symptoms and were on a betabloker 24/7/365, AFIB would not be on the forefront for you... the only thing to worry about would be the risk of stroke and managing it, which can be managed by distracting yourself by living a full life.

OK, that was longer than I intended and I didn't want to philosophize, but I guess I did.

:-)

petey

I should have added "and taking an anticoagulant, preferably a NOAC that doesn't require a constant reminder of AFIB like Coumadin does because you have to get your INR tested frequently".

Ohio, you cant prove "progressively worse by my experience, but if I exhausted every treatment naturally or medically, and was a daily afibber, Id take the ablation with little apprehension. There really isnt that much for long term studies on effectiveness or dangers, but at our ages 60+, not much to lose and much to be gained by getting our lives back.

I can offer a somewhat different perspective. I'm only 39 and have had two ablations (the second one, knock on wood, has been effective with zero arrhythmia for 6 months now).

I feel so absolutely horrible when I'm in afib, or any type of arrhythmia, that I won't hesitate to ablate again, if my symptoms were to reappear. The past 6 months I have gradually started to live my life again, and now I don't think about what my heart is doing. 6 months ago, thinking about what my heart was doing was all I could do, my afib and SVT were so frequent and so intense.

I can't say how effective my surgeries will be years down the road. I could have fibrosis, as petey mentioned, or afib could come back. I'll deal with that if it happens. For now, I'm going to enjoy NSR and do some living.

IslandLuvr, I apologize for anything in my original message that did not come across as empathetic to your plight. I do understand. Your symptoms are far worse than mine. I'm terribly sorry you are going through this.

Todd

Sorry, didn't mean to say it gets worse, but that the frequency increases.

I wasn't going by my own experience...I read it here:

http://www.stopafib.org/progresses.cfm