Cardio Update

The surgery was a success as far as I can tell. It usually takes 4-6 hours for a cardiac ablation and it actually only took 3 hours for me. We were rocking out to awesome music in the operation room and the amnesic-like state that I was in made the time pass extremely quickly. As most patients will attest, there were moments of being uncomfortable as they DO have to stimulate your heart into tachycardia in order to isolate the 'bad' area that they will be ablating. I got lucky. Within a second (literally) of them hitting the electrodes my heart was off to the races. They clocked me going 300 beats a minute. I'm not really sure how my heart didn't just explode. Human anatomy is a wonder!  So, they were able to identify the faulty wiring, which happened to be far enough from my AV node to allow for heat ablation rather than freezing. Apparently, freezing the area has a significantly decreased chance of success. So, lucky for me they were able to use heat and take care of the problem. I also took some advice from EMT friends and requested pillows under my knees and behind my lumbar to decrease the soreness that always follows after this type of procedure. Lo' and behold, my friends were right and I had no body soreness the following day - only tenderness around the catheter wounds. I didn't even need to use Tylenol for my pain. I was treated really well by a great staff of nurses at Exempla Saint Joseph's Hospital in downtown Denver and my Cardiologist Dr. Ngo was fantastic. I'm healing well, and back to my usual zippy self. Thanks for all the posts, calls, emails and people that dropped by the house. All the well-wishes were deeply appreciated.