A little more involved catching up

In which I need to ask for help if you can.  

At top of the "home page" of the blog, right above the blue box that has the blog's name in it, there's a thin gray bar.  There's a little box on the left of that bar just next to an Orange block with a white B in it - the logo for Google's Blogger home page.  If you enter the phrase "cardio is killing you" in the search box it will open four posts.  In the default order they're Cardio May Be Killing You from September 8, 2011, Cardio May Be Killing You - Part 2 from August 1, 2016. Those are the better references, but there's also a third post about corporate wellness programs, Wait... I'm Not the Only One Questioning Wellness Programs? (The last one isn't really related and I have no idea why Blogger returned it in the search).

What I'm calling attention to here is that both of those first two focus on the idea that while the popular idea since the 1970s or earlier was that running or cycling "cardio exercise" in general was the ticket to better health and longer life.  In fact, there was a hidden untruth in there based on the very common attitude that more is better.  Blindly increasing your mileage running or riding or even just walking is not a ticket to long health and better life.  To borrow a passage from myself, ever since Dr. Kenneth Cooper's work on aerobics in the 1960s, cardio has been the standard recommendation.  In the 1970s, when I first started running, there was a highly publicized study that said no marathon runner had ever had a heart attack. They concluded that marathon running made you immune to heart attacks. This was bullcrap - it was pure selection bias.  When this study was done, marathon running was an obscure sport, and only a few really dedicated people ran marathons, so they were a self-selected group of very unusual people.  As the running fad spread, more and more people, with their checkered pasts, started running, and it wasn't too long before marathon runners started having heart attacks, too.  

Where I'm going with this is a major portion of the second post, about atrial fibrillation or Afib.  Like I said, I started running in the late '70s when the fad was soaking in quite well across the country.  I'm not sure exactly when but let's say around '77-'78, so I was 23-24 and not in particularly good shape.  In school I ran when they told me - aside from the sandlot football we'd play - and almost laughed at running deliberately.  Someone likes running?  "Pull the other one, it's got bells on it."  Somewhere around 1994 I saw an orthopedic surgeon about knee pain - it wasn't the first time - that ended with a  fatherly, hand on my shoulder and him saying "you know,  you're not built like a runner."  I had bought a nice bike but we never really rode much.  Suddenly it seemed like a good idea and we started riding.   

I was wholeheartedly “more is better” in cycling for years.  Be able to ride a century (100 miles) any day of the year, “you can ride in one day whatever you ride in a typical week.” My wife and I used to ride together maybe 6 days/week - skipping Friday evenings. Yeah, we'd get rained out or blown out by extreme winds, but the normal thing was to ride every day after work and dinner. This started in the early 90s because I had been the same way about jogging and by the time I was getting close to 40, my knees were giving out. By about 2010 or 12, we just started riding less and eventually dropped it. 

In 2013, the year I turned 59, I had a sudden bunch of awful feelings in my chest - and I was sure I must have talked about it here but it wasn't one big post I couldn't find about it.  After some preliminary things, I was referred to cardiologist and wore one of those 24 hour monitors you'll hear about (a Holter monitor).  Among other things I was told I had Atrial fibrillation - Afib.  I've been through lots of experiences with the cardiologist, who retired a few years ago, and I was assigned to his replacement in that practice group.  Last year, when I turned 70, he told me my chances of having a stroke due to the Afib double when you cross 70, (yeah, from 1% to 2% absolute risk) and started me on a blood thinner

Which leads me to this year.  At my annual check in visit with the cardiologist they told me that during a couple of previous echocardiograms, the results had said my Afib was causing the valve to leak and they set me up for a TEE, - Trans Esophageal Echocardiogram - to get a closer look at my atrial valves.  That was my June 2nd hospital visit.  The TEE is supposed to be able to give a more precise measure of "how leaky is leaky."  So how leaky was it? 

The answer is that it's not a bad leak but it's time to face some harsh realities.  The whole time I was being monitored there (so every time he's seen me since April) I was in Afib constantly.  I don't really notice it, but that doesn't mean anything.

Harsh reality #1: much like my hernia, Afib and these valves don't get better on their own. 

Harsh reality #2: there are pretty much just two ways to fix it. The first is called cardioversion, which uses medication and once you've got the drug in your system, they shock your heart back into a proper rhythm. With the exception of I think that puts me on that medication for life, I think it’s the relatively low pain option. The other fix is more invasive, called ablation. That one shoves an electric probe with an imager and more up your femoral artery into your heart and literally burns away some heart tissue that is causing the Afib. As I understand it, we’re unconscious through that.  There's a cryoablation version of that kills parts of the atrium by freezing instead of burning.  I don't see much difference.  

As it turns out I have two friends that have been down this decision path: one had ablation, and the other had cardioversion.  The doc asked me to do some research and let him know which one I'm more interested in getting done.  The guy with ablation is off his prescriptions and completely over it.  The bad  part is he had to have the ablation done twice and they were six years apart.  I'd really like to not have to do that.  The guy who had cardioversion was "one and done" but he's still on his prescriptions, (in fact the same two drugs I'm on - blood thinner and beta blocker).  

I was hoping to find people who have “Been There, Done That” with either of the Afib fixes. Lacking that, maybe a link to someplace else online where I could go.  At the moment, I'm leaning toward the ablation but that's not as strong as I was leaning before I found my friend had to wait six years to finally get it fixed. 

Thoughts appreciated, stories, results - that sort of thing.  I don't expect doctors to answer, just folks who have BTDT.