My expectation was not good. When the guy was running my ultrasound, my heart was bouncing off its walls. The treadmill test was pretty short. Too short, really, because I reached the max heart rate of 165 awfully quickly. Because of my heart rate bouncing between 80 to 225 on the meter, it took no longer than 6 minutes to reach the max and end the test. Hell, I hardly got winded at all.
So Friday I met with my cardiodoc and, armed with much more info than he had before, told me to quit the Multaq and start up on amiodarone, one of the most-reliable drugs at treating my condition. Amiodarone is an anti-arrhythmic, which basically, somehow, gets the heart to start beating at a normal rhythm again.
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(The wife also has a history of A-fibs, but hers is treated with a rate-reducing drug, Toprol. Those are the two primary types of drugs to treat A-fibs: an anti-arrhythmic (mine) and a rate-reducer (hers). Ain't we a pair!)
The doc felt very confident that, considering my test results, and considering the very detailed recent bloodwork I had just happened to have done by my G.P., that this drug, amiodarone, would do the trick. He did give me one major caveat: do NOT pay attention to what the internet has to say about this drug. Said it would just freak me out for no reason.
He knows that I cruise the net for this, that, and whatever, and he said that I WILL NOT TURN BLUE! Well, after that, I had to check out the net, and woah! Go here, among others. He wasn't kidding.
After just a couple of days on this drug, I'm feeling much, much better. No racing pulse. No wildly erratic heart rhythms. No dizzy spells. No euphoria (dammit)!
Now, if I could just purge from my body all of the built-up toxins from living in the modern industrial food and technology era, I may eventually be able to get off of this drug. Maybe. But no pacemaker!! Yea!! Once again, I narrowly avert that Siberian Tiger out to get my ass.
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