I owe my readers a health update, so here goes … I have atrial fibrillation (AFib), diagnosed and initially treated with cardioversion 15 months ago. Cardioversion is an outpatient procedure where they put paddles to the chest and shock the heart into a normal rhythm. Kickstarting is a temporary fix; my AFib came back at the end of February.
I had a second cardioversion in early March, but within a few days was in AFib again, so I had a third. For now, at least, my heart rate is back to normal.
At my cardiologist’s insistence, I’m going to see another doctor, an electrophysiologist, for an ablation, a more invasive procedure: they thread a device through the veins into the heart and burn the tissue causing arrhythmia. It’s a six-hour procedure that may require an overnight hospital stay. Ablation is a more permanent solution than cardioversion, but my youngest sister, who also has AFib, has had one and tells me her doctor said a second is sometimes necessary. So we’ll see.
I have an initial consultation with the electrophysiologist later this week, and should have a date for the ablation soon. Soon is good: Medicare is still functioning and they haven’t yet stripped military retirees of our Tricare for Life supplemental insurance … I want to get it done before DOGE comes a-callin’.
In all my visits to doctors’ offices, clinics, and hospitals, I’ve observed almost everyone in the medical field wearing smartwatches. When I ask, most say they wear them to track their heart rate, and since I need to be doing that too, we’ve added an Apple Watch to my arsenal. That’s it on the left, next to one of my favorite “real” watches, a pilot’s dual time zone watch set to Arizona and Zulu (GMT) time.
This is a problem for me, a watch collector who likes to wear a different timepiece every day. My solution, for now anyway, is to wear the smartwatch most of the day and overnight, and to wear one of my regular watches in the morning while the smartwatch is on its charger. There’s a dorkier solution, wearing a regular watch on one wrist and the smartwatch on the other, but I don’t know if I’m brave enough to go out in public that way.
I must admit, now that I’ve found the watch face menu in the Apple Watch app on my iPhone, I’m starting to have a little fun with the smartwatch. I may even add a #bigapple to the #bigseiko hashtag I put on my daily wristcheck social media posts. There … I’ve just lost every serious watch collector follower I ever had, right?