The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Some Friday in mid March of 2025, I contracted some nasty virus that had me just curl up in bed and shut down from Friday evening to Monday morning the following week.

I did not eat or move much from my bed over this period.

This was rather unprecedented for me.

It was not COVID or Flu or even a common cold and I did not even have an upset stomach.

I had no idea what that was. It was something very different.

But it wiped me out. As in I had to curl up and not move or twitch kinda wiped out.

I had a COVID test and it was negative on old test units that had expired, then I had another on current tests that was a false-positive and it was finally clear on the third one.

A few days after I was man down, my wife Julie got something similar but seemed to recover faster than I did and she was only out for a day or so but it did affect us both, me more than her.

However, I watched her breathing getting rather labored at times and she never seemed to recover fully, and I suspected some RSV like thing at play here.

After building sheds, painting them and doing light house chores it became apparent she was having some serious breathing issues.

On Monday May 31, I took her to a Walk in medical facility on Lone Tree in Antioch after she told me she was not feeling too good, and these walk in folks wanted an ambulance to transport her 500 yards to the Sutter Delta hospital location after taking her stats and they admitted her immediately with some urgency when I drove her the 500 yards myself.

She was having a 208 BPM heart flutter situation, and they could not control it.

That whole following week she was tested, scanned and given a raft of meds to try and manage this condition.

The meds did indeed bring it lower after a few days.

They had no idea what this was that was causing this heart problem and suspected drug abuse and all sorts of other exotic theories later like Chagas Parasite.

We did not appreciate their bent and attitude much when they were convinced that we were druggies though. After the raft of tests they ordered for that cleared that up their attitude got a whole lot better.

All I was told is "she has had heart failure". This was very alarming indeed and rather too generic.

That statement tells you nothing.

Her symptoms are admittedly akin to Chagas Parasite late stages, but they have now ruled this out. I am not so sure they should rule the viral thing out so fast.

Her symptoms, however, remain a perfect fit for that nasty parasite.

A few weeks ago, another heart circuitry specialist the Sutter Cardiologist had referred her to tried to do heart ablation in an effort to take care of the flutter, but the heart electrical guy is more concerned with preserving his near zero bad stats than actually going in and doing his ablation thing.

I get the idea she is far too risky for his perfect stats to be taken on as an ablation patient.

He told us that he stopped immediately when he found a blood clot. This was a definite statement of fact that it was a blood clot.

Then in his report he writes "fear of" a “potential” blood clot which we saw posted later that evening at around 8 PM.

"Fear of" and it's an actual blood clot is not the same thing at all.

He probably looked at the Echo Cardiogram data again before he committed his opinion to writing after much contemplation on the matter.

The fact is a blood clot that size would have killed her by now in any event.

It is thus clear to me that he over-reacted somewhat on this issue.

I understand an over-abundance of precaution, but how do we overcome this issue and get the fix done?

I am sure this is frustrating as hell for all parties concerned including the heart electrical guy.

In the meantime, we consulted UCSF and Stanford specialists and they have a different approach and that is fix the Mitral valve problem and everything else will come right.

My considerable research with my 3 years of med school and my pals who are heart specialists at Groote Schuur and St Albans tells me this is a better first action before ablation gets served up on the operating table way to go.

When she was admitted to Sutter Delta, they also thought that she had a clot/mass in the healthy chamber and would not even do the camera scan but 2 days later they did it regardless.

No sign of any blod clot when they went in then, which was interesting.

So, they have now changed her meds to be geared towards dissolving blood clots and stopped one other, citing 4-6 weeks on this regime before they want to proceed with the ablation attempt once more.

I guess the risk factor then is lower for the good doctor's risk averse stats satisfaction?

We are probably gonna fire his ass in any event.

Their nurse practitioner seemed to think this ablation would likely fix the issue here and stated she has seen this sort of heart flutter incident a lot recently, but the Dr and his anesthetic side kick ghoul seemed to think she was in a dire state and gave her the worst outcome picture possible when talking to her.

The contrast was stupid.

To the extent I got the idea her only path forward was just to go home and die and was now a salient strategic thought de jure in the patient this was communicated to (and her poor husband).

Work needs to be done on these two guys bedside manner, that's for sure.

I checked the heart electrical guy's reputation, and it is impressive, so no concerns as to his specialty and skills there.

This risk aversion bent of theirs was at variance to the Sutter Cardiologist view, and it was he that collaborated with this heart electricals guy in Concord and pulled him into the equation in the first place.

Julie lost her shit over this development and when the good doctor published his notes he had moved from "definitely" a blod clot to "an overabundance of caution it might be a blod clot and "might" represent an unacceptable risk" etc.

I saw her point on this after 10 minutes of pondering this data he had later written, from her vantage point.

Our failure here in this saga was not having regular annual checkups.

We are both Dr shy post our own past operations and experiences and have neglected this aspect to our detriment. Mea Culpa there I am afraid.

On top of this, Julie bought me an Apple watch a year ago and my BPM registered 63 and hers was 128 when we played with it.

We should have reacted to this data then and investigated deeper, but we did not, our bad.

We thought the watch was having issues measuring her heart rate as it took about 8 times to get a reading and did not dwell on it further - we should have.

I cannot stop beating myself up about this on a near hourly basis....

Had we known earlier vs now is moot at this point though.

Sure, we could have maybe fixed it then by shocking the heart successfully but as she was walking 10-12 miles a day last August and this past February with no problems, I am wondering about this scenario a lot of late.

The Cardiologist claims that sort of activity would have seen her drop dead. She did not drop dead...I almost dropped dead trying to keep up and my heart is healthy.

I am going back to the March virus that laid me low and affected her as well on this one.

In the meantime, I am now playing mental health games and am pulling her back from the edge only for me to go to the giving up square she was on a few hours later myself because she had seemingly given up.

This emotional see saw is not a whole bunch of fun.

Character building stuff this shit.......

The idea of losing my beloved soul mate and partner in most everything is not a happy thought place space to be in either.

I am a tad worried here......

It is now the first week in July and the meds have left her with a static 61-144 BPM range heart rate which is a lot better.

The FitBit her eldest son got her depicts this range during the day and that looks similar to my own.

They eventually got her a Zoll Life Jacket by the way for what that is worth (zilch).

New dates for a repeat of the ablation start July 31 with a new scan, August 4 for the first Ablation and August 11 for the Mitral Valve action.

I think we gonna go with the Mitral valve fix first and then see what this does before we get to ablation.