First Office Visit, Second Round of aFib

I saw my cardiologist yesterday for the first time in 10 years following the return of aFib episodes in the past couple of months. At this time I have been averaging about 1 episode per week. Most the episodes have been very short (under 15 min) but a couple of them have been a couple hours long. The appointment yesterday went well. They did an EKG but since I was not in aFib at the time of the appointment the results didn't show much. According to my doctor it is not unusual for aFib to return after a number of years following an ablation (which I had in 2012). He indicated that some of the scarred tissue from that time could have healed which allows the false signals to reach the rest of the heart or it is possible that it is coming from a new area of my heart.

Next steps will be for me to have an echocardiogram in about 1 month and at that same time I will have a monitor attached that I will wear for 14 days to try to capture one or more aFib episodes. This is so that it can be confirmed that this is what I am experiencing prior to any new treatment. Following that it will take a couple weeks for them to process the output so my next doctor's appointment is in 2 months (5/20/22).

An alternative to me wearing this monitor from the doctor's office was to buy myself an expensive smart watch (several hundred dollars) that can do the same monitoring or to buy a different device ($100) with a sensor that you put your fingers on when you feel like you are having an episode and it transfers the results to your phone via bluetooth. Wearing the doctor's office monitor feels like the best alternative for me at this time as it should catch any short episodes that I might not notice (this also seems better than the watch to save money but also I don't wear watches or rings due to it aggrevating hives that I get).

Goodbye to a Friend

Rest in Peace Nancy!

Another decade, another post

I had forgotten about this blog for some time but recently remembered it as I was wanting to find some dates of my previous health issues that I had documented in the blog. I had the cyroablation on my heart in 2012 to treat aFib. Thankfully it worked very well for the past 10 years up until the past month when the aFib episodes have slowly started again. I haven't seen my heart doctor since 2012 since things were going so well. I have an appointment now to see him in 3 weeks (I sure am glad that he is still practicing and is receiving "new" patients at this time). The purpose of this post was really to record these latest incidents (started on 2/6/22) for my records and for anyone who is curious how good the cyroablations can work for aFib. It helped for 10 years in my case as I had no noticible aFib episodes during that time. Life is good on all other fronts. God is good!