Persistent AFib Was Not the Holiday Gift I Wanted

For what seemed like years, I was in symptomatic atrial fibrillation (AFib) that felt like baby goats dancing in my chest. Or as my cardiologist preferred to describe it from listening to my chest, "squirrels running around."

Underlying hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

In 2022, after consults at the nation's top cardiovascular centers, I entered the University of Maryland for an ablation to treat the AFib. It was six days before Christmas and from everything I read, would only require one night in the hospital. My condition was tricky, due to an underlying cardiac condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), the most common form of inherited heart disease. It's not uncommon for HCM patients to develop AFib, but in my case, the condition had persisted for months without relief.

A failed procedure

The procedure took nine hours. It wasn't successful. I lapsed back into AFib before I was strong enough to sit on the side of the bed the following morning. I was devastated. Not only from the failure of the procedure, but the emotional toll I could see it was taking on my family, friends, the nurses, the orderlies, the sonographer, my co-workers, other heart patients I counsel, and untold others.

Cardioversions at Christmas

The days leading up to Christmas, I had three cardioversions and none were successful in keeping me in a normal sinus rhythym more than a few hours. I felt defeated, unable to function with any normal activity, totally consumed by the gyrations from "squirrels" and "goats" in my chest.

On Christmas Eve I decided to go home. The resident on call said, "We can keep you here for Christmas or you can go home in AFib. We have done all we can do." It was that last comment that seared in my mind reminding me of what is said to someone when chemotherapy fails to eliminate the cancer.

Better health this year is the best gift

It was another 14 months before I would find a way out of AFib and get on with my life. This Christmas I feel as near normal as possible living with a chronic illness — dodging cars in the parking lot, racing through the stores, cooking my mother's favorite breakfast casserole, wrapping gifts, and decorating the tree.

Better health is the best gift I could have hoped for this holiday. My perspective has changed and this holiday, I see warmth in the smallest of details — a quiet morning by the fire, a child's smile at the mall, a warm batch of muffins, a sparkling tree covered in lights. They were there all along, but this holiday, I see them more clearly.