Events in Brest

[didunth]

I' ve just returned from Brest hospital. A few months ago I was wondering whether I should push getting an ablation. I saw Prof Mansourati who said that an ablation might work - that it was up to me to decide. I decided to go ahead. There was a problem during the procedure in that there was a slight amount of bleeding outside the heart which was more of a problem that the left atrium was very dilated. In any case there was very little electrical activity from the pulmonary veins, and not much elsewhere.

They kept me in hospital for 4 days, at first doing continual monitoring of the heart and scans and ECGs every 5 hours. They finally let me out today for good behaviour.

It was an interesting experience. It was done with local anaesthetic without sedation. I could see what was going on, and the catheter moving.

Since I did not have very serious symptoms (I was getting out of breath and abnormally tired) my heart monitor registered quite high values (150 - 180) when going uphill but without feeling particularly stressed, I think this a reasonable result. Prof Mansourati thinks I should loose weight (about 5 kilos) and do more exercise. I already do quite a lot so this is really very encouraging. I was also taking diltiazem - he thinks I can give this up. Again another plus. For the next week I am trying to encourage my husband to pander to my every need.

[Rellim296]

Thanks for this. It's always good to hear about people's experiences in different places. I would have liked to have been much less in the land of nod than I was for my ablations. It must have been fascinating to be alert. Good luck with the weight loss. 5kgs is a nice goal - enough to be a challenge, but not an endurance test.