Posted by Ken Willis on January 08, 2004 at 02:41:26:
In Reply to: Scared but thanks!! posted by Suzi on January 07, 2004 at 05:56:45:
Suzi,
I'm sorry that you have so much apprehension from apparent misinformation from a doctor. I hope that you get better medical information about your situation and that it relieves you, as it should.
I know a little bit about how your fear feels because in my early 20s I got a cancer that left me with a 50% chance of being alive after 2 years. At least once a day for that first year I'd get a sudden, piercing, physically painful pang of fear. That was over 35 years ago, but I still remember how it felt. Unless there is some source of stroke risk that you didn't tell us about, I think that you don't have any basis for your fear.
Before I had documented afibs, I had what my cardiologist felt were PACs (premature atrial contractions). PACs usually feel like a skipped beat followed by an extra powerful beat. As I understand it, what actually happens is that you often get two quick beats in which the ventricals don't completely fill and then a beat in which they're really full (hence the strong beat). In retrospect I think I transitioned into afibs many years ago but kept thinking it was just the PACs my cardiologist had diagnosed. I even climbed one of the major peaks in Washington State while in what must have been afib (it was tough!). I finally got on the path to detection when my wife and I were on a 4-day mountain trip involving off-trail steep terrain. I went into afib (at the time I didn't even know what afib was, only that my heart was out of rhythm in what I assumed were continuous PACs). We were roped up on steep snow, I was carrying 50 pounds, and it felt as if I were at 20,000 feet. Linda was amazed and grateful that it was so easy to keep up. When we got to the top, she could see that my lips were blue and I wasn't responding normally. She asked me where we went from there. I looked at the map and compass and pointed down a very steep and vicious-looking gulley. The terrain was steep just about everywhere, a rock-climbers paradise, but neither of us was prepared for rock climbing, and she sure as heck wasn't about to go down that gulley. I was very good with map and compass, I'd been climbing and hiking in the Cascades for over 40 years and the route we'd planned was entirely on very reasonable terrain, but my hypoxic brain could not figure out where we should go. The long and short of it was that Linda recognized my disability and insisted we go back the way we'd come, and after we got home, I got a monitor from my cardiologist to find out what was wrong with my heart.
The tracings confirmed afibs. I was about 54 then, and had afibs a couple times a month or so for several hours at a time at that point. The doctor told me that a major health risk with afibs was stroke, but that in a person of my health and "young" age, my risk at that juncture was pretty minimal. For that reason he didn't think it necessary for me to take a blood thinner at that time. Extrapolating from that experience, it's probably fair to say that for you the risk of stroke is far less than it was for me because you're not having afib events and you're far younger than I was. It's really pointless to worry about afib-related stroke risk if you're not having afibs (the risk of stroke, I believe, is highest when you first go into normal rhythm after being in afib because that's when you begin to empty your atria more fully and any clot that formed in blood that pooled while the atria were fibrillating stands the best chance of being thrown into circulation).
I tried antiarrhymic medicine, an ablation, and an atrial pacemaker to get rid of the afibs, but the cure was maze surgery. The ablation tripled to quadrupled the frequency of my afibs to the point where I was in afibs between 100 and 140 hours per month. I was put on coumadin (a blood thinner intended to prevent stroke). If afibs ever return, your doctor can manage your risk of stroke with coumadin or another drug. But if you're like me, you'll be more concerned with finding a cure for your afibs, and luckily for you there are a couple of them now and maybe more in the future. You've come to the right place to find out about them, at least from the patients' viewpoint.
I know that your concern is reflexive and not easy for you to control, but the first step to abolishing it is getting good information and believing it. I hope that this is a start and that it helps.
- Re: Scared but thanks!! Suzi 03:44:31 1/08/2004 (0)