Gary's Posts

Good news for you. Consider the medtronics implant i have as an alternative. I ditched eliquis, stayed on metropolol due to aneurism and now take baby aspirin. Tiny little under skin linc Implant sends any a fib incidents to doctor for 3 years. Like a dog chip. Knock on wood, no reoccurances. Its worth exploring.

Afib after surgery is pretty common. For me, it returned later on. Cardioversion helped me a lot with my pulse rate. However, it didn't eliminate afib. According to my cardiologist, you can live just fine with constant afib. The biggest concern with afib is blood clots but I am on blood thinner and I had my appendage remove. On the other hand, another surgeon told me that afib can weaken your heart. You might want to discuss this with your surgeon and/or cardiologist and I certainly would like to hear their opinion. Having said that, you said that you didn't start your rehab yet. I assume that means you just had surgery 1-2 months ago. If so, I think it's a bit early for cardioversion. I would wait a couple months. Also discuss with your cardiologist about meds like Amiodarone, etc.

Alas, afib is one of the most common after effects. Don't know why they don't talk about it beforehand but they tend to deal with one problem at a time. Not everyone wants to know all the possibile problems. Surgery is hard on your heart. But eventually these after effects get taken care of and one moves on. Take care.

There have been a couple of developments in the last day or two. I messaged my cardiologist and told him about the non responsiveness from the rehab department. I got a call at 9:01am this morning and they said that it hasn't gone through because there was no diagnosis code on the rehab orders. I would think that someone would have called about that sometime in the last 3 weeks sometime before the 3rd contact that I made with them about getting scheduled. Anyway, the next step is that they said that the soonest they could get me in was November 20th, Almost 12 weeks after my surgery. I made a couple of calls to a different facility about 20 miles away, and lo and behold she said she could get me in tomorrow. 90 minutes after I got off the phone with them, they had called my surgeon that had issued the orders, talked to my insurance and had all the information they needed to get things set up. My appointment is scheduled for 1 pm tomorrow. She also said that I may only need a 6 week program, which would be great as that is almost when my leave of absence ends. The Nov 20th start would have run me into next year and a new deductible and copay, so it all does work out. The moral of the story is to stay on top of things with healthcare. Push for the answers that you're entitled to and if you're not getting the response that you feel you should, look elsewhere.

Started Rehab yesterday. Last week was just paperwork and orientation. They are proceeding with caution because of my elevated heart rate and the afib. The Afib was still there, but my heart rate actually dropped to a more normal rate and stayed there most of the day, but was back to the elevated level by evening.I have another session tomorrow and again on Tuesday, then they'll make a decision on whether to proceed by putting me in a group or not.