I remember someone recently asking what AF feels like... I myself tried to answer when ITV poked their heads up recently, an interview that got cut to the rather lame 'it feels like bubbles'... Well, sometimes, it does feel like my chest is boiling.
Had another episode Thursday night and found myself grimly thinking about this. Normally, the heart beats like a Viennese waltz - one two three, one two three, lovely sine wave, lovely sine wave... Then when it goes into AF it's like a blasted salsa, capering about all over the place probably with an inappropriate cocktail in its hand.
Take Thursday night. It was like having the builders in. Bang! Bang! Bang! actually woke me up, then kept on for hours as if someone was hammering a nail in and not doing a very good job of it. In between running to the loo (a charming side effect) and dozing it swapped to going 'moosh moosh moosh', as if it was pretending it wasn't beating at all, just to give me something extra to think about. I reckon, rough count, it goes up to 170bpm.
At one point it was so rough and unruly I thought, this is like Alien, and I'm John Hurt, the darned thing is going to explode out of my chest at any moment and go on a rampage eating the neighbours. I won't be flavour of the month in the village when that happens...
Okay, I know, apologies, my humour's always been inappropriate... And yet, weirdly, some people don't feel AF at all. I'd like to say they're lucky, because having this sort of caper going on in your chest and then feeling like you've run a marathon afterwards, when everyone's demanding breakfast, isn't so funny. But of course the risk of stroke is the same whether you feel like your heart's in a tumble dryer or not. One thing that saddened me was that the TV thing cut out the plea for people to check their pulse, which is really important. AF's not really a laughing matter...
My AF story (well part of it anyway)
Asymptomatic AF
What does your AF feel like?
Living with AF
AF and possible stable Angina
