Fixed! Round 2: 12-hour light-sabre throw-down in my heart

heart catheterization (artist's rendering)

The human body objects to all puncture. After being opened and reopened for medical purposes with small, considerate needles and scalpels, it defies my imagination how a human could endure arrows, bullets, swords, or spears. What seems to be the end game in my battle with Ventricular Tachycardia began with a duel between my left arm and a nurse who managed to roll all the useful veins in it while trying to install an IV. It ended with my much-more-proficient Doctor Francis Marchlinski light-sabreing his way around my pericardial sac, routing out insurgent electrical circuits. It was his third visit to my heart; almost as if the epic quality of this adventure was deserving of a trilogy.

As I explained before, an epicardial ablation is not the walk-in-the-park an endocardial ablation is. The chest is entered with a large, hollow hook-shaped needle (the same one used for epidurals), the heart is reached through the pericardium and a catheter threaded in the opened channel; other catheters are passed through the femoral arteries reaching the heart from the inside. The heart is mapped, the dangerous circuits identified and eliminated internally and externally. Endocardial ablations are completely internal and thus less invasive.

Dr. Marchlinski found himself in a spot of trouble upon sitting down to work. Apparently I had been so drugged up the previous days that my heart would not produce any V-Tach on the table. The first step in ablation is to incite the heart into its bad behavior, find the locus and zap it. But my heart, despite all the previous drama, was behaving itself. I was sedated but awake when they discovered this, strapped to the table and fully cathetered. The epicardial catheter had not yet gone in -they knock you out for that- but I could sense some frustration in the room as I was loaded with adrenaline and electronically pulsed to high speed. All told, I was on the table for twelve hours; it seemed I was awake for the first three. Marchlinski took a bunch of educated guesses as to the locus of my circuits. As a consequence many of my PVCs were also eliminated by the end of the day. The main culprit, the original V-Tach-creating-scar, was already well-known and identified through prior mappings, and although it wasn't producing V-Tach now Marchlinski spent extra time going over it. In the end the diligence seemed to work. I was Dr. Marchlinski's first repeat customer for epicardial ablation for V-Tach, and, I'm sure, we both hope, his last.

I emerged from surgery in much better shape than my previous epicardial. I spent 24hrs on my back in a Dilaudid haze, unable to move because of the holes in my chest and groin. But I wasn't a paranoid mess like last time. It was all fine. My heart was utterly steady. I couldn't remember the last time it had been that way. The 12 hours on the table, the repeat surgeries, the cardiac breakdowns, were all worth it for this.

In a matter of days I could tell things were going to stay stable. While my body recovered from the surgery the soreness and sleepiness overshadowed the great feeling of a heart beating just like everyone else's. But after two weeks I was ready to declare myself victorious. I introduced a couple caffeinated beans to my morning brew. No worries. I had a sip of wine. No worries. A few days later 2 glasses of red wine. Nada. More caffeinated beans. Finally, three weeks out, I reintroduced exercise...