I've been telling people for 25 years that you can't just be a patient. You have to be an informed consumer of medical services.
Being a paramedic has helped me do that, but there is a lot of information available these days. You also have to carefully evaluate that.
Atrial Fibrillation (AF) can be life threatening or it can be mild. It also has a lot of potential complications from heart attack, to Congestive Heart Failure, to Deep Vein Thrombosis, to Stroke.
Because the blood does not flow out of the Atria smoothly clots can form and travel to other parts of the body. In addition to rate control, blood thinners are used.
I'm pretty good at reading EKGs and if you know what to look for, it's easy to recognize. The key to recognizing any cardiac dysrhythmia is knowing what a normal rhythm looks like. Also, looking at a lot of them helps.
I've been lucky with primary care doctors because I can have intelligent conversations with them. I know enough about the commonly used medications for cardiac disease to ask good questions. On the few occasions where I've bee prescribed a med, I ask for the lowest acceptable dose.
Pacemakers have improved in every way since the first ones were used. Very, very few people have complications with implantation.
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Originally Posted by tops
I decided that years ago and I have saved the insurance co. and myself several dollars.
I also check on the side effects of medicine that they prescribe. I have very bad kidneys and when I had a knee replaced the doctor prescribed a pain med. that is hard on kidneys. I got the medicine changed.
A kidney dr. told me I needed to take a Potassium pill. I looked at the results and my Potassium was in the middle so I didn't that the pill but it was in the summer and I ate tomatoes at least twice a day and when I went back he said quit the Potassium pill. I told him I never started the pill and explained why my Potassium level was higher than the earlier reading. He cut that visit short
I really believe that if I didn't check behind the doctors I would be in worse shape than I am. I'm 82 and can still do some manual labor so I must be doing something right. Larry
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