I have A fib and they attempted this procedure on me a few years ago. The procedure is not bad. Your leg will be sore for a few days and if they do like mine they will use a plug to plug the artery so it does not bleed instead of sitting with the darn sand bags on your legs for hours. Which I have had done before as well. I don't want to scare you but I also want to let you know what happened in my case which I will stress (IS NOT TYPICAL) My doctor suggested the procedure to me because they could not get my A Fib and other arrhythmias under control she told me it has a 98% success rate and they believed it would be a good option for me. I had this done at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston so a pretty good hospital I went in for the procedure and just be warned ( I was not prepared for this) they may shave your nether regions. I only say this because it caught me off guard but once they explained it I understood why but was still a bit of a OH moment lol. Anyways I went in to the procedure at 12:00 pm. They gave me some sleepy meds and put a bunch of monitors on me including what I thought at the time was 2 giant heart monitor pads on me one on the front of my chest and one directly behind it on my back both left side. They explained to me they would be doing the mapping and I may feel my heart rate go up and down if I was not completely asleep so not to worry. I was actually zonked out! They woke me up at 1:30pm and told me they had mapped out the areas they needed to and were about to start the ablation portion of the procedure. That is the last thing I remember until 4 pm when I woke up coming out of the procedure room. They took me back to the recovery room and my doctor was sitting there waiting for me. She kept lifting my gown and looking at my chest. I kept wondering why she was looking at my chest when they went through my legs. My husband came back to the recovery area and his hair was standing straight up and I could tell he had been crying. By that point I was talking, eating having a drink and everyone around me was acting really really strange. My doctor didn't leave my side, the nurses were fawning over me and my husband was loving on me like I had never seen. Something was up! I finally ask ok what is going on? Why do you keep looking at my chest??? The doctor then explained to me that I went into an A Fib attack on the table during the procedure and they could not get my rate until control and it had shot up to over 600 bpm and chemical conversion did not work and they had to Cardiovert ( use the DeFibber) on me 6xs to bring my rate back and they had had a really hard time stabilizing it even after that. I was like Ohhhhh ok now I understand. I had at that point never been cardio verted outside of using drugs. I still honestly didn't understand how bad it was until I got up to move. I found out they had went through both legs and what I thought was an IV bandage my other arm was actually where they had also went through my arm for something. I felt like I had been hit with a semi in the gut. I could barely walk I assume it was from the DeFib jolts. I was actually on my way home by 5:30-6:00pm after that. Once they watched my heart rate for a bit and made sure I wasn't bleeding they sent me home which shocked me. At that point I was a bit nervous to go home but they assured me I'd be fine (which I was) On the way home I asked my husband why he was so upset, I was fine, I felt fine when I woke up he explained to me then that he had heard the code called to the procedure room, right after the code was called they called him on the phone in the waiting room and told him there was a problem and poor guy had to sit there alone waiting to hear what happened to me all alone. I felt so bad for him. On the hour drive home I was sore but doing ok. When I got home by back and chest started to burn terribly. I hadn't taken my shirt off since I got dressed at the hospital but I kept telling my husband it was burning really bad. I finally went and got changed and when I took my shirt off my chest and back were burnt really badly in the shape of those big giant what I thought were heart monitors. They were apparently stick on defib paddles. I had 3 of them on my chest and back so each one must be good for 2 cardioversions. That night I was in so much pain, that the next morning I had to go to Urgent Care. They told me I had 2nd and 3rd degree burns on my back and chest from that. You don't ever see on TV when they use the paddles on people that they complain of burns or feeling like they have been struck by a semi. My doctor never explained to me that this was a possibility. As far as I knew I was going in for a simple procedure (which it is) but there can be issues. I wanted to let you know about them so that you aren't caught of guard like I was. After all of that they ended up aborting the ablation as they said I had too many bad areas in my heart and they would have to burn too many areas. So for me the procedure was not successful, My next option is a pacemaker/Defib combo which I am waiting for awhile to get. As I said please don't think I am trying to scare you. The catheter part in the legs and the procedure recovery is pretty easy. You do need someone to drive you home and you maybe sore in your legs for a few days, do not lift anything heavy until they tell you you can due to the entry site for the catheter it needs to heal and you need to watch it for bleeding. I was told before I had my procedure that after the procedure I may have a few fluttering episodes but not to worry about them it was normal. I wish you the best and a speedy recovery.

I certainly understand your thoughts Marilyn. the thing about the warfarin or couadin is that there is an antidote... He is going to have to have a long recuperation from that bacterial infection. My friend had a small one on her leg...calf. and it took about a year for it to completely heal...I got better quickly after treatment but she was plagued for nearly a year with the darn thing. OJ I can get the Warfarin at no cost too but the doc wants me to do the Eliquis. I am so full of puncture wounds I like the idea of not having to do the blood tests ...

The US system is messed up, electronic record-wise. Part of the problem being that the world of medicine lagged behind most other sectors in adopting IT and more modern technologies. Larger providers led the way but many others were slow and interconnections weren't a priority. A good example is that hospitals were probably the last customers of the mostly long-gone world of pager users. Electronic medical records and systems needed a final kick in the pants, part of which was given by Medicare charging a penalty starting in 2015 for providers not using electronic records. My primary care physician retired for that reason at that time, citing his refusal to make such a change. Going the other way, I had occasion a few years ago to go to an Urgent Care facility of a large practice that includes docs and hospitals nearly 500 miles away from home. I signed a number of forms at check in without looking at them. Sometime between then and when I was seen by a doc 15 minutes later, they had downloaded some portion of my health file from the medical school group practice I use where I live. The urgent care doc had that information on the screen in the exam room and asked questions me a number of questions, including whether the list of prescriptions (that I hadn't supplied) was current.

Oakley hope the medication works. It seems to be working for my DS who has bad bad blood sugar fluctuations and not a great relationship with healthy food. She will be 65 soon enough so I don't think that will change. Shrug. Glad to hear that some of you are doing well with the water. Not I. It seems I can only get down two drinks a day. One is half water half juice and the other one is a cup of ginger tea or decaf coffee. I try to drink another half glass of water in the early evening but always seem to forget. Also I'm not a good protein eater. I think I'm failing in that whole healthy food thing. I fail dismally at replacing the meat for vegetarian protein sources, as I only eat chicken fish and seafood, when I eat animal protein food and often forget to do that. I do eat eggs in the morning and about every third day I add tinned sardines to my faux pho. I love it when I have it but can't have noodle soup everyday. Also I am disappointed that I can't dance my way into muscles.. ;-):-). I have to do more weightlifting so I'm going to try a Zumba with light weights class. I know I need it and if it is successful I will continue to utilize dance with weightlifting. I know they suggest backpacking with weights as well so perhaps I will try that. I suppose I could dance while I am backpacking ;-). Wishing everyone continued success and still totally envious of those who have Pilates in their life. Can't afford it. For some reason can't find a Pilates instruction online that I stick with. So far. ETA this squats improving exercise set. I find this very helpful. https://youtu.be/BqF90pMpjb4?si=VMl19XEFa5C5Ia0E