Flutter

I have had a number of episodes over the past couple of weeks. I went back to the cardio doc early last week because I was concerned that even after giving up all sin (no caffeine, alcohol, etc.) that my flutter is back and driving me crazy. He is sending me over to see Dr. Kay at UAB who is a leading doc in the area of catheter ablation. I told my cardiologist that I did not relish the idea of long term medication that may have other complicating factors depending on the regimen. The doc put me back on a Holter monitor to track my flutter which has been frequent as of late. Basically I either trigger the device to record or it picks up an irregular heartbeat and automatically starts to record. I had several auto starts in which I did not detect any unusual heartbeat. Usually I can feel the flutter, but I wonder if I am having episodes that I cannot feel...that thought is a little distressing.

I explained all this stuff to Tom when we met this morning. In fact, I had an episode or two this morning after church and I used the land line phone in his BOQ room to transmit the recordings. The monitor transmit the recording over the phone and you can actually hear the recorded heartbeat and detect the irregular beats! Now if I can just get in to see Dr. Kay in a timely manner rather than wait a number of months. He is pretty popular and I found out that to make a regular appointment would take up to 4-5 months.