Afib

[ahp]

I came off the toilet last Tuesday morning and collapsed. We called 911 went off to the hospital in the ambulance. EMT's are great guys. Erratic pulse at 160 per minute. Welcome to AFIB, atrial fibrillation. I spent three knights and four days in the hospital. My heart is now chugging along at 72 per minute.

I thought once my heart was behaving I would be back to the races. Not so. It takes longer. How many here have had AFIB? Nasty sneaky thing.

[bluedog225]

Sounds concerning. Glad they got you headed the right direction.

[stromborg]

Glad you got good care.
A surprising number of people live with it, taking one of the "lols" (atenolol, metoprolol etc...) which are beta blockers to help regulate the heart rate, often coupled with a blood thinner because there is a danger of clots. Assuming you end up on drugs for this, it is important to relay that information to any future EMT/paramedic types you might be in contact with, it will help sort out what if any pre-hospital care you might need.

Sneaky side-effect of blood thinners is you are at higher risk for bleeding in the brain. Enough old folks on blood thinners have fallen down, hit their head just a little bit and start bleeding internally that nowadays we really push for them to go to the ER for further screening.

Side note from your friendly forum EMT: Once you are on more than say 2 medications, type up a list of them and what they are for and keep it handy for the next time you call 911. It makes it so much easier to do the paperwork.

[Gib Etheridge]

I've lived with clinically diagnosed afib for years. I can pretty much work through it until it get's up above 180 BPM or so. Over 200 I take 25 mg metoprolol and sit or lay down before I fall down and knock my teeth out on something. My record is somewhere well above 240. I just can't function at that rate, not enough O2 to the brain.

Other than an aspirin once in a while I don't take the thinners. I get cut fairly often.

I can avoid most of it by abstaining from coffee (caffeine), chocolate (theo bromine) and avoiding stress.

It's interesting to note that I went one whole summer without an incident by going camping for that entire summer.

Some friends have had the ablative procedure. The consensus is that the hot ablation is more effective than the cold.

[carlg]

I've had A-fib for years and take coumadin and metoprolol. Still had bouts of A-fib from tiime to time, so the doc put me on Multaq and all the symptoms are gome. It's expensive, but a life-saver.

[AJZimm]

Welcome to the club. Mine is "paroxysmal", meaning it comes and goes. I'm on an anti-coagulant but otherwise it's pill-in-a-pocket for me when the episodes happen and don't stop on
their own. This past year has been really good, though, only one episode where I needed the pills.