Next in a Continuing Series of Non-Cycling-Related Posts

I had the "procedure" done on Thursday, as mentioned in a previous post. "Ablation", they call it. It was a surpisingly not-entirely-unpleasant experience, starting with the staff at the hospital. When did hospital staff suddenly get so pleasant to deal with? Last I was in a hospital, and I'll grant that it's been a few years, the overall attitude was, "my, aren't you an inconvenience to my day, and don't you forget it". The fine folks at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue were nothing but nice, tolerated my questions (in contrast to a previously typical, "*sigh*, (curt answer to question)"), and even laughed at my nervous attempts at humor.

I'll spare the blow-by-blow leading up to it. The idea is to shove some electrical catheters up a few leg veins starting at that groin, with the heart as the destination. From there, try to reproduce the symptoms I've had so that the doc can figure out which part of my heart to hit with the arc welder.

"Bring an iPod", the cardiologist said. Wheeled to the procedure room, clutching my video iPod, I discovered they have a sound system with an iPod dock. I could have just brought the smaller, less-likely-to-cry-if-I-lose-it Nano, but I had Chronicles of Riddick on the big iPod. Hell, I didn't know, maybe I'll be lucid the whole time and want to watch a movie. Ermm, no. The iPod was whisked away to the dock, with a little of the ol' Motor City Madman soon blasting away.

The catheters and their sheathes are tiny little things. I figured that in order to do anything useful, they'd have to be the size of, oh, a pencil. This is what happens when people whose medical education stopped at college freshman biology try to imagine medical things. It turns out the instruments used are really about the size of a large needle. One hell of a big needle, but still smaller than I was picturing. In under five minutes they had a little joy juice flowing in my IV, and had the four catheters (two on each side of my groin) shoved to my heart, all displayed on the screen for my viewing pleasure. I never felt a thing.

The little bit of fun drug they shot into the IV wore off quickly, and it was time for the main attraction. I didn't get a really good briefing on how, exactly, they would reproduce the symptoms I've had. The "how" became apparently soon enough.

With the electrical catheters, the doc could vary my heart rhythm. At first, it was kind of amusing. Were I feeling this while sitting at dinner, I'd be heading to the emergency room. But since my heart was (I assumed) supposed to be doing that, I was giggling as the different rhythms were run. Cool stuff, really, as I could watch the EKG readout on the screen and get visual feedback as it happened. Not that I can even begin to read an EKG, but I don't think the patterns I was seeing happen in a normally functioning heart. I looked for an image on the web to illustrate, but Google can't give you everything, I guess.

The nurse pumped a little adrenaline into the IV, and kept upping the amount ever so often. That's about the time my giggling stopped. After a point, it felt like my heart was going to pound through my chest, and I was getting a severe headache. All the while, the weird rhythms kept going more intensely than before. All I wanted now was just a five minute break of normal heartbeats. The doc could go get a latte, I get a nice 70 bpm of a regular-looking EKG for a few minutes, we start up again in a bit. No such luck, we continued on. The EKG was looking whacky, as if a two year old had drawn his representation of The Fall of Man on the screen.

The nurse asked me how I'm doing. Now I know she was just trying to look out for my interests, but every readout on that screen probably said that it's time to break out the shocky paddles under normal circumstances. I decided to save the sarcasm for folks that don't have complete control of my heart beat at the moment, and went with the more polite answer: "Umm, if I were anywhere else, I'd be calling 911."

The cardiologist ordered up 8 (units of measure; "mikes"?) to be pumped into the IV. I asked the nurse if there is ever a TV moment where she says, "8 units? But Doctor, no one has ever survived that much. It could kill him!"
Doctor: "just do it!"
She said that never happens. Maybe it should; I think the treadmill stress test was easier than this.

The nurse said that it should be done soon. The cardiologist doing the procedure had some visiting doctors from another hospital checking out how it's done. Hell, he was done 30 minutes ago. He's just been showing off his toy to his other man friends the remainder of the time.

"Can you get the WhatsIt wave to do an inverted sigmoid pattern? Our older model doesn't."

"Dude, dis one iz da shitz. You crank that knob, you're golden."

"Cool, can I try?"

"Sure. Whoa, whoa, whoa, not so much there! Wow, that was close, you nearly killed him. But no harm, no foul, right boys?" (manly, gut-holding chuckles)

"And check this out: it's got an iPod dock."

I was hoping to be undrugged for the part where the offending piece of the heart was vaporized. Could I feel anything? Notice anything at all? Smell burning heart flesh? But by the time the test portion of our program was completed, I just wanted a nap, and nap I did. When I wasn't looking, they must have gone ahead and put a little something in the IV. Next thing I know my eyes pop open to see the nurse and the cardio tech.

"Hi, I'm Richard, the tech. Here's what we're going to do today during the procedure..."

"Your sedation wasn't that good, buddy. Are we about done here?"

I don't know how I stood it doing so much hospital time as a kid. The remaining five hours after returning to the room were insanely boring. Too tired to read, not tired enough to sleep much. Hungry, but don't really feel like eating. Since there are puncture wounds at four points in the veins of my legs, they don't want me moving, not even lifting my head off the pillow. Aye-fuckin'-eeeeee! At least they have satellite TV these days. But it's the cheap tier of DirecTV, on a crappy old school screen, with the sound coming out of a tinny speaker in the bedside control.

Sweet freedom comes at nine in the evening, and I'm off. The release instructions say to resume normal activity after two days. Apparently for those that usually get this done, "normal activity" does not include riding a bicycle at a racer's training level. The cardiologist gives me the special instructions of staying off the bike for a week.

Once back on the bike, I'll give it a week and do a ramp test in preparation for winter training. We'll see if there's any power improvement over the winter, or if this whole thing just removes a training annoyance.