Lemons to Lemonade

It's Over

Thank you all for your prayers.  It's over...at least for now!  It will take several months to determine if the proceedure was effective.  But Richard is resting, cranky, and ready to come home!  They made two "dams" of 88 ablations.  It only took about 6 hours.  There were computers, robots, cameras, 3 doctors, 4 techs...quite the production, but I must say, so far the stay at St. Josephs in Orange has been wonderful.  From the valet parking attendant, to the nurses and doctors, everyone was great, helpful and loving!  I even drove home for a good nights sleep before going back in the morning to fetch him home! 

Cardiac Ablation

My sweet husband Richard is going under anesthesia for 6-8 hours tomorrow. He is having a proceedure called Ablation. He has been living with the threat of rapid heartbeats for 5 years now. The real threat is stroke because when his heart is acting up, blood tends to not circulate the way it should and pools and can cause a stroke if not taken care of (by immediately going to the ER and having it converted back to normal rhythm)...His heart rate has been known to go up as high as 210. The meds he takes to stop this, also prevent him for working out because he CANNOT work hard enough to break a sweat.  The medicine makes him really tired (I presume so he will be unable to have the energy to get his heart rate going).  The medication gets progressively less effective over time, so they tell us there will come a day when he will have to live with the fibrillation full time and take Cumadin (which is rat poison) to thin his blood on a permanent basis.  We are fortunate that the Cardiac Ablation is a choice for us! 

They insert tubes through his groin into his heart which are like mini cameras that reveal what is going on along the way.  It reminds me of that great old movie Fantastic Voyage.  Then they try to get the heart to act up so they can tell where the problem is.  They them use either heat or cold to “build a dam” around the areas where the irregular impulses are originating.  It works about 75% of the time.  If it doesn’t work, then they’ll go in and do this again.  The doctor, an Electrophysiocardiologist.(?) said the whole procedure usually costs around $75,000.  Yikes…thank God for insurance.  He’ll stay to be monitored in the hospital overnight. 

We are excited about the medical knowledge that allows him to be treated and ditch the meds and the black cloud, but a little apprehensive about the whole thing at the same time Please pray for us on Friday…Thanks…God Bless