Health

I turned 63 last week and celebrated by going in for a catheter ablation the next day. This has become a fairly common procedure where a pair of catheters, or tubes containing instruments, are stuck into the femoral arteries in your groin, one on each side, and then threaded up into your heart. Once there the doctor performing the procedure will target some specific spots in the heart to either freeze or burn, creating some scar tissue that will hopefully stop the patient’s atrial fibrillation. This generally works well in about 80% of patients and I was hopeful it would resolve mine.

I have been living with Atrial Fibrillation (A-Fib) for the past three years now. It seemed to be nothing more than a nuisance until late may or early June this past year when I noticed my pulse rate starting to spike again when out running. Slowing down helped for a while, but eventually even a light jog became too much. Finally, in August, I contacted my cardiologist to setup an appointment to discuss this.

I went in a couple of weeks ago for my annual physical.  I did this primarily to have my PSA level checked, making sure that the prostate cancer is still gone.  That value was undetectable this year, which is good.  What was not so good is that my cholesterol levels had spiked up into an unacceptable range.  My total cholesterol jumped from 205 to 240 and the LDL cholesterol (the bad stuff) jumped from 127 to 162. So late last week my doctor called to have a chat with me about taking care of this problem.  The options given to …

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Yet another trip to the cardiologist indicates potential Atrial Fibrillation. Treatments include drugs or a Catheter Ablation, burning out the faulty tissue

Over the past 20 years, or so, I have had periodic episodes where my heart decides to start periodically skipping beats.  I made it in to see a doctor a couple of times when it got particularly bad.  They would run a test or two and ultimately tell me that it was normal and not to worry.  So, last spring when the latest, and worst, episode started I just ignored it.  That is until early November when my pulse would occasionally jump to over 200 bpm when out running (I wear a monitor for training purposes).  Initially suspecting an equipment malfunction, I …

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Not too sure just when it happened, but I think I have finally started to get old.  And I don’t like it very much.  Granted, the age related discounts at eateries is a bonus.  And being retired is definitely a good thing.  But what my body is doing to me is not much fun. My hair has been slowly turning gray over the past 30 years.  And over the past few years I have started to notice wrinkles on my hands that are not supposed to be there.  But none of that really bothers me all that much.  Having gray …

Read moreAging Gracefully – Not Gonna Do It!