Back From Austin

Had my 5th ablation this past Wednesday. Dr. Natale addressed the issues that were causing me issues.

My LAA had a reconnected circuit. He has worked my LAA 3 times now and hopefully this will be the last until I hopefully get a watchman down the road. My LAA is smaller than most so he has to address ablating it a different way than usual. There were also a couple smaller areas he addressed that fired off afib but weren't sustained.

Traveling during Covid is like taking part as an extra in some sort of weird Sci-fi movie. Where only a few people are aware of what's going on.It's easy to tell who those are as they are the ones wearing Tyvek suits and full head covering masks and rubber gloves. These folks also spend an abundance of time cleaning their gloved hands with hand sanitizer. While the rest of us are obviously ignorant to the situation that we find ourselves in.

Anyways, our trip home from Austin was pretty boring. Had a two hour layover in Atlanta and a 2 hour drive home from Pittsburgh international. So it was a long day to say the least. I did sleep really good last night though. Bed at around 11pm and out of bed @2pm today. I really needed it as I hadn't slept much since finishing up night shift Monday morning. Not counting surgery I was averaging about 4 hours a day this week.

Our stay in Austin was pleasant but shorter than normal. We stayed in the downtown this time. Things were pretty quiet there this time. I'm sure it was mostly due to Covid and the normal afternoon/evening crowds we are used to seeing are people leaving work and hanging out. Who aren't there now due to working form home. We did spend part of an afternoon on South Congress wondering through the small shops there.

I'm feeling really good today and looking forward to a week or so of just being. I can't express enough how appreciative I am of Dr. Natale and his team. As well as the staff at St David's. I really tried to convey that to everyone but still feel I need to do more

Still sluggish today. I can't say that I have ever felt the same following an ablation. Each time has its own little nuances.

One major difference this time around was my fitness level going into it. Not nearly as fit as I was back in 2009 but a far cry better than 2018 & 2019. Actually I would like to completely forget about 6 months worth of 2018 if it were at all possible.

Still sluggish today. Didn't sleep as well as I thought I would last night. Heart rate is rather low. Lingering between 54 and 64. I am currently only on Elequis and 25mg of metoprolol. I should be able to toss the metoprolol at the end of my blanking period so 3 months of governed heart rate which I am more than happy to deal with.