Yesterday morning I went into the hospital for a cardioversion which I now know is the name given to the procedure in which they stop somebody’s heart – in this case, mine – so that it can restart with a normal rhythm. For me, it is a relatively easy procedure. I show up at Sequoia Hospital with Michele who will drive me home – and took the above picture on her iPhone – check-in, get escorted to an empty Intensive Care Room, take my shirt off and lie down on a bed.

For the nurses and doctors, it’s more difficult. First, the nurse installs? gives me? hooks me up to an IV (even though IV has become a pretty common abbreviation for intravenous – which is medical Latin for into a vein – I’m not sure how to hook it up to a verb). The IV is used to start me on a saline drip because I haven’t had any water in about eight hours and they want me hydrated. Then a dozen, more or less, electrodes are placed around my chest, arms, and legs. About that time, my cardiologist comes in, and after some brief pleasantries, attaches a plate to my chest and one to my back. The anesthesiologist gives me a sort of mouthpiece to bite on – hard plastic with a hole in it – and then gives me an injection through my IV. He tells me that the anesthetic is fast acting both in sedating me and in only lasting a short time after which I will wake up. I feel a slight fluttering – which is way not accurate, maybe tingling is better, maybe just a slight altering of my conscience.

I only know what happens when I am out by hearsay or listening to YouTube videos so this may not be completely accurate. My cardiologist fishes a sonar-type device down my throat to get a better echocardiogram reading of my heart, especially the upper atrium. She is looking for blood clots that could cause a stroke, although I shouldn’t have any because of my blood thinner. Then she stops my heart, hoping that, when it starts, it will be in regular rhythm. It is, but a couple of minutes later, the Afib rhythm comes back.

Then I am awake and everybody is gone except for the nurse. I have no sense of time having past, I could’ve been out for ten seconds or ten hours. The nurse asks me how I feel and tells me that I am still in Afib (in a more caring and connected way than that sentence makes it sound). About then, Michele is let back into the ICU room, all the hospital umbilical cords are taken off, I put my shirt back on, the nurse walks us to the car, and we go home. It’s like nothing happened except I have a sore throat. While I was dubious about the cardioversion working, I now realize that I had a big emotional investment in the cardioversion and it not working has left me feeling down and disorientated enough to post a gratuitous picture.

My next step is an Atrial Fibrillation Ablation which worked for more than six years the last time I had it done so I am very hopeful…to be continued.