Home from the hospital - Friday, September, 22, 2006

It was a bit of a surprise when I went to see Donna's cardiologist on Wednesday morning and the heart doctor sent me across the street to the Texas Heart Institute in the Medical Center at St. Luke's Hospital for Atrial Fibrillation. The likelihood of a stroke in people with AF is 5 to 7 times higher than in the general population. Although about half of all blood clots related to AF result in stroke, clots can travel to other parts of the body (kidney, heart, intestines), causing problems. They ran a tube down my nose to check for blood clots on the upper chamber of my heart. Finding none, on Thursday afternoon, they did a minimally invasive surgical ablation. Unlike traditional heart surgery, there is no large chest wall incision and the heart is not stopped. These techniques utilize smaller incisions and endoscopes (small, lighted instruments that contain a camera). The surgeon cut a artery in my groin and running a tube up it to map the heart and to precede with the ablation. He said this was the Cadillac treatment and has cured me where shocking the heart is a temporary fix. The surgery was done in the cath lab where they do all heart catechization at the Texas Heart Institute.

A busy week with it starting our going to John's surgery on Monday and his funeral on Saturday. and 3 days at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in between getting my heart fixed. We leave for fall folage in New York on Sunday morning and return to Houston the following Saturday. A week at home and then our Caribbean cruise out of Galveston.