According to The National Center for Biotechnology Information: Sudden death likely or possibly related to catheter ablation occurred in 7 of 334 patients (2.1%). That is a big number – big enough that, if it were the death rate for flying to New York from San Francisco, everyone would take the train – but the success rate at Sequoia Hospital is better, much better and more importantly it is a stat I didn’t know until very recently. Still, going in, my thoughts kept returning to the possiblity of going into the hospital, going under anthesia, and never coming back. I was the second in the queue yeterday and I was a little concerned while I waited but my biggest concern, and the biggest risk, is that the proceedure will not take.

The ablation itself is a technological marvel. They put an IV into an artery – or, sometimes, a vain – at the patient’s groin and fish a catheter up from there into the heart – in this case, my heart – inwhich they burnoff the nodes that are producing out of rythum heartbeats. The the lab/operating room which is huge and chock full of equipment is like something out of a sifi movie by Ridley Scott with a huge array of 42″ flat screens, maybe six or eight of them and when I am wheeled in I am stunned. My first thought is how I would like to take a couple pictures and I think how much Michele would like to see this. I ask if she can come in just to see it but I’m told no because the room is disinfected. I say something like “But I haven’t been disinfected.” but figure out the answer to that one before he tells me I’m already infected with me. 

For me, being in a hospital is a spiritual expearance. Everybody we interact with is in deep service, starting with the doctor who meets with me several times to aswage my fears and answer my questions. It continues with the nurse who walks us from the waiting room to the prep area where she preps me for the operation by, among the other usual things, shaving my front and back while another nurse puts in an IV, marking pulse points on my feet with a felt pen to the nurse that wheels me into the lab/operating room. It continues with the nurses who take care of me that night and the next morning. Everybody is here to help and it is deeply comforting. 

Now I am home, the ablation seems to have worked, and I am very much alive. Life is sweet.