Posted by Glenn Camp on June 04, 2004 at 23:58:07:
My wife and I went to Houston today where I had an appointment with Dr. Cheng who did my ablation March 9. I had worn a 30 day event monitor from March 22 thru April 22 and had telephoned 82 events with most of them being pvc's. Dr. Cheng said I had sent some recordings of beats that were not pvc's and were merely hard and/or faster beats. I told him I intentionally sent them and knew at the time they were not pvc's but wanted to know what kind of beats I was having.
The surprise to me was when the representative from St. Jude's checked my pacemaker and it showed I had had 62 episodes of afib since the ablation until today. Practically all were periods of a few seconds to less than one minute duration. The day following my ablation I had several episodes of afib and I was not aware of it but was aware of pvc's which my pacemaker also showed. Dr. Cheng said the afib episodes were lighter than I had been used to having, and I wasn't having hardly any to speak of. He had told me to expect some afib for awhile post ablation. They were so much lighter that I couldn't feel them like prior ones to ablation.He told me to stop my dosage of 100 mg flecainide twice daily. I asked if he wanted me to 'taper off' and he said..... "no, just stop it altogether today; dont' take anymore".
We discussed ablating these dadblasted pvc's and he said he could do that but would prefer for me to wait another two months and see if I was having anymore bursts of afib that might require a touch-up ablation for afib and also ablate pvc's while in there. He says that if he goes in now and ablates the pvc's that I may still require a touch-up ablation later for pvc's and that would mean an extra trip 'on the table' and not the thing to do if could be avoided. I agreed that made sense but I am anxious to get rid of these blasted things.
I am going to start therapy next Tuesday for regaining my strength. I will initially be fitted with monitors with a cardio guy present working with the therapist to determine what level I can start and then he will recommend a workout regimen that will be safe for me to do. I am going to have to ease into it as I have become weaker due to the pvc's restricting my physical activity.
Just wanted to let you all know what my status is.
Glenn
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