Re: afib & PVC's

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Posted by John Behle on January 06, 2004 at 20:42:41:

In Reply to: Re: afib & PVC's posted by Jeanne on January 06, 2004 at 18:56:34:

I had my first attacks of Afib around 15 or 16. They would be pretty mild and last for a few minutes to an hour or two. It stopped me from soccer, but I still did freestyle skiing and motocross racing. It would affect my skiing occasionally, but not too much. Around 19 it seemed to accelerate. I remember one point feeling very light headed and taking a pulse at 36 BPM. My pulse was always low, but this was ridiculous. It seemed like the athletics made up for the weakness and it only got worse when I settled down. In my 20's it slowly got worse, then much worse in early to mid 30's. By then it hit a point where it would be in afib for a day at a time and more frequently once to twice a week. Then it hit a couple days at a time and even three. By my early 40's 50% of my life was AF and I basically had to quit racquetball, jogging and all physical activities.

I used to teach seminars of from 2 hours to 5 days. More and more often I would find myself literally holding on to the podium trying in every way to pretend everything was OK. I used to really kind of get a kick out of the fact that I could hide such a serious problem most of the time. Most people had little compassion for it anyway. Some even thought it was in my head or no big deal.

By 43, I was pretty bad off and didn't feel I would make it another year. And frankly, I didn't really want to. With all I had to live for, the depression and bleak outlook of more and more of an incurable illness was deadly.

I basically have an extremely low opinion of the doctors I had seen to help. No one had a clue, so I set out for a little research on my own. One patient of my wife's mentioned her husband was having some good success with a new medication and I began to research it on the internet.

I never even knew there was such a thing as Atrial Fibrillation forums, but my research for the drug led me to one. Amidst all the blah, blah, blah about meds, triggers, etc. was one post that floored me. It was by Jim Pope and just mentioned he had had this surgery that had cured him and he was now back to his competitive swimming. His website then led to this newsgroup and I began reading.

My wife walked into my office to find me in tears unable to speak. Thirty years of hopelessness had been shattered by a glimmer of hope that I could have a normal life. I read every word, found one of the best surgeons in the nation in my own area and made an appointment as soon as possible.

He looked at my EKG and in a non-chalant manner asked if I had had enough or something like that. A few months later, (as soon as I could increase my health enough for surgery) I was cured forever.

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