I’m getting a WATCHMAN™  tomorrow morning, and I’ve been in a sort of denial about it. I have AFib – AFib is Atrial fibrillation, a heart condition that causes an irregular and rapid heartbeat in the upper chambers of the heart – according to Google AI – and although I’ve been through half a dozen procedures to get rid of it, the AFib keeps coming back.

However, the biggest danger of AFib is a stroke brought on by a blood clot generated in the heart, swirling up into the brain and causing a stroke. The fix for that is to have me take blood thinners – not just me, obviously, anybody with AFib – so that the blood doesn’t clot.

It turns out, however, that 90% of the blood clots come from an area lovingly called the LAA (Left Atrial Appendage). Big Medical, if there is such a thing, has invented a way to cover or plug the LAA as the sort of fascinating video below shows (if you can get through the pitch in the middle).

The entire procedure should take about 25 minutes, my doctor tells me, and I’ll spend 3 hours recovering. Prep starts at 5:15 AM, and I should be back home by noon.