Clear as mud

Dad acquired an arrhythmia after a heart virus he had some years ago. It's technically called “atrial flutter”, a form of fibrillation in which the upper chambers of the heart sort of vibrate and do not much else apparently. He was fixed for a while by getting zapped with those paddles you see on tv when someone is about to flatline. This is called “cardioversion”, or reversion of an uneven heartbeat. When the flutter returned, they did the ablation trick on him and that worked.

Last November, Dad awoke realising that he was out of sync again, and it took until February to get an appointment with some hotshot who then shunted him off to get another dose of cardioversion, which is what he had done last week. Dad was actually saying that people with cases of atrial flutter are quoted as saying "Oh that episode was nasty, it didn't go back into rhythm for about 8 minutes that time!" and here's me old man walking around with it for months non-stop!

The procedure last week involved a 5 minute general anaesthetic and application of the pads. They did it three times, increasing it up to the maximum they could safely try - is anyone else picturing Rick Moranis insisting on going to "waaaarp speeeeed"? Apparently Dad saw the printout from the ecg later: the hiccups caused when they applied the shock (the heart stops) was followed immediately by a return to the uneven rhythm. It didn’t even look like reverting to “normal” and was heard to have said, "Computer says no". Ok, so I made that last bit up.

There are no immediate reasonable alternative options. Ablation for AF is risky, has lower success than for flutter, and may leave him dependent on a pacemaker (with all that that entails). But Dad reckons there is good news: his pseudo-pulse rate is around 80, which is relatively slow for AF (being, atrial flutter, my Dad doesn't get periods - that I know of - in case you're concerned with that acronym....). So while the rhythm is out, the pace is OK and is regularly irregular, so he doesn't need treatment for heart pace (pulse). And under those circumstances he says he can cope with the arrhythmia. This also means he only needs to keep taking the warfarin (to guard against strokes, as it keeps the blood thin) and he won’t need to take any of the more nasty pills that aim at slowing the heart down or mimicking a regular heart beat.

So I guess all this just means he'll be around a while longer yet. It's kind of like one of those "Oh good, phew" endings that are really fizzers. Can't help feeling like I've been short-changed or ripped off somehow but I'm checking my wallet and looking back at the counter and thinking "Hang on.... if I gave you a 50....".