one more and then on to other topics

I'm trying to keep up with everyone's blogs but I'm rather preoccupied as I'm sure everyone can imagine, still spending hours researching, sent off another barrage of questions via the patient portal. I've had a comment from one twin granddaughter on FB and a face time call from the other and been chastened by my daughter for not telling her/them about the results of my doctor's visit before I published it on my blog. That's not the way for her to find out, she tells me. Oops. My only excuse is that writing about it helps me assimilate what's going on. But, yes, I should have called her first.

Here's some other things I learned...atrial flutter is a right atrial disease, afib is a left atrial disease. In typical cases of flutter, the atrial (the upper chambers of the heart) are contracting at a rate of 150-300 bpm (beats per minute). The atrial rate of bpm is not the same as the pulse rate (ah, so this is why). The pulse rate originates in the ventricles (the lower chambers of the heart) which beat at some ratio of the atrial bpm.

So, the ablation is scheduled for the 25^th with a TEE scheduled on the 24^th. The TEE or Trans-Esophageal Echo is an echocardiogram from the inside where they can get pictures of my heart without having to look through the rib cage and lungs like a regular ultrasound echocardiogram from the outside, which is what I thought I was going to have after I told him btw, the cardiologist 2 years ago told me I had a leaky valve. I'll have an IV and they will sedate me but not put me under then numb my throat and ask me to swallow a tube with a camera on the end! Not sure I can do that especially with my throat issues. And how do you swallow a tube!? 

This whole thing just gets better and better and by that I mean worse and worse.

I had resigned myself to the outpatient ablation which turned into an inpatient procedure and drug administration and now this! This is way more than I'm prepared for. One of the questions I previously asked through the patient portal was if the sotalol manages flutter as well as afib why not just try the sotalol first to which they replied that it doesn't manage the flutter as effectively as it does the afib and flutter can induce afib so eliminating the flutter first makes it easier to control the afib. Basically. That and that as I age the condition will worsen and possibly become constant. Treating it now is more desirable than treating it once it becomes worse. Well, I have a whole week to decide whether or not I'm going to go through with it or get a second opinion (or rather third if you count the RNP as the first) or decide on trying just the medication first.

I'm in total overload. No more thinking about it til Monday. I have a mold to finish filling, I have a dog to walk, and a yard to water. Eleven inches of rain week before last and the ground is already so dry it's cracking.