How to go about your life when your not at 100%.

I think I may have committed a cardinal sin by talking about my personal health problems on this blog where I only meant to post some chapters of a creative project I pieced together. Of course since Atrial Fibrillation is just so new to me I can't stop thinking about it, and maybe a little fascination with this subject might be more solid ground to cover than Vladimir and Leo's gonzo world. And I also think the Wikipedia entry on A-Fib undersells how this condition works on a person by calling it 'the most common heart rhythm disorder'. I take some issue to it because it sounds like they're describing a simple flu that happens to anyone picking up any given virus around the house and you can even just sleep it off. They do go about explaining procedures to manage this condition, and it still all sounds too light, at least from my perspective. I don't think there's any antibiotics for this, if there were I'd love to try some! And that is because Cardioversion, the procedure I have gone through to manage this problem, is a real pain in the ass. There's more than just the electrical shock, which you have to be unconscious to receive, there's an insane maneuver the doctor has to perform to make sure the fibrillation is not being caused by a blood clot in the heart, and he inspects that through the use of cameras in your mouth. If I were to undergo this procedure again tomorrow, and you and I were talking face to face, I'd describe all this to you simply by showing you the side of my face to use my hands and tongue in gestures as if I were giving somebody a blowjob. Now then, taking this consideration that they're putting things in your mouth while you sleep, the mouth first obviously has to be sedated safely before they do so. This is when the procedure gets real hectic because it requires a level of your own participation. For this, you have to gargle an anesthetic, it is horrible. I mean once you get that first spit in you feel the chemical chocking you with a special manure aftertaste, and you have to gargle again, and again, and again, until your mouth is good and numb. Last time, last month, I went in with a little cold and couldn't stop coughing the entire morning. I almost threw up when one of the nurses checked with that little stick to check if the mouth was out, then it took more than one shot of anesthesia to sleep me down. What's funny is that the doctor had joked before all that. "Well Al, we're gonna go all Michael Jackson on you!"
"Hnyou been hit by, you've been struck by, coronary heart failure..." - No shit!

Anyway when they're done they're done, and I don't even need a wheelchair to leave the place to sleep off the anesthesia for the rest of the day. It was a big deal for me the first time, even though the doctor sternly reminded me that this could happen again, I was just relieved because it took me all summer to get some healthcare issues cleared and finally receive the procedure. I was finally free to enjoy the fall and the holidays, summers are usually terrible for me, this was normal. Then flash forward to last month again, out of nowhere on the routine checkup they tell me it's happening again. That just disturbed the Hell out of me, I asked a hundred questions of what I might've done to end up in that situation again, doctor just tells me I gotta cut down on caffeine. Nurses giggle that I should stop drinking, the internet claims I should stop drinking, doctor tells me it's cool I don't have to stop drinking. Paranoia sets in and suddenly all your buzz in the weekends is wrecked. What's crazy is the things I did between the last 8 months, to last month, to now. Since last month I haven't had a single drop of coffee, during the last 8 months before March I happily kept fancying myself as a craft beer enthusiast...

True story.

...also had coffee during that time before last month. Then you know, last Thursday happened. Just out of nowhere, I lie down for a minute on my bed, then I get the pressure as I breathe, the type that makes you feel like some sitcom retard that needs to be reminded when to breathe. Everything just went to Hell from there, the lack of sleep had set in as the heartbeats go up and down like a basketball dribbling, making any position I'd be lying in bounce. Sometimes, like last night, this translates into straight up insomnia. Nothing's worse than turning off your TV just to watch hours fly by in the dark. Unlike last year however I've gotten rid of the daily migraines, and that was since getting rid of coffee. Which is bizarre because you're typically told coffee helps with migraines!...by people you don't trust with your life in the office.

Long story short, fibrillation just seems to happen. There's probably no way to prevent it, no way to keep your heart in place. One visit the doctor says some other bigger surgical procedure might reduce the chances, the next he tells me something along the lines of the more surgery I take the higher the chances. So there's no out of this, at least not just yet. I can be overseas, I can be alone in Hell or paradise, and this will just happen. Simple adrenaline seems to make the worse faze out, just walking around, playing some videogames, or helping fix things around the house like I did today gets my mind off, yet I still feel the weight of it. And so, this is my adulthood. This is that young guy in his 30s hitting up the Cardiovascular Hospital on Centro Medico for that constant treatment. I seldom meet people my age with the same condition, everybody is like super old in that Hospital, and on the non-invasive lab. Fact is I've only ever met one person with the same condition as me and happened to be around my age. Only saw him twice, the second time was the last I could ever see him because since then he has passed away. My family always reasons that I take care of myself (even the doctor has claimed that it took long enough for me to start having A-Fibs), and it seemed as if that young man was too busy living happy to tell anyone when he'd feel ill. Makes one wonder where to go from here.

A more informed mind finding this may assume that I'm blowing the situation out of proportion, and in a cynical worse case scenario maybe even claim that my anecdotal testimonies don't count for much,but there's really nothing to fight and set right for me as I type about this.

Well who knows, maybe I'm in for a surprise on Thursday.
- AA