Anyone with SVT (supraventricular tachycardia)? Have you used Kardia Mobile?

Thanks for sharing that list of risks, and also for your kind words!

I will report back after the procedure has been done.

 

My catheter ablation for SVT was yesterday. I almost had to stay overnight but managed to get discharged eventually.

Happy to be home, resting and recovering, will post a longer update sometime later (few days, maybe?)

PEM will probably hit me later today, but who knows? Grateful that the procedure was a success and that my husband is here for support.

 

Good luck with your recovery - hope it goes well and achieves the objectives you were aiming for.

 

I'm still planning to come back and post a short report but I've been delayed a bit. I spent all my mental energy posting on Mastodon and Bluesky during ME Awareness Week / May 12th. No regrets, but it wore me out.

I'm planning to post my report next week.

I know no one is rushing me, but I still wanted to post this quick update!

 

It has taken me forever to write this up but I'm finally posting a brief summary of my catheter ablation procedure for SVT which happened on April 26.

It's not gory, but I decided to use a spoiler tag just in case anyone here has trouble reading about blood or medical procedures.

Spoiler: medical procedure, blood

I had a pre-op appointment a few weeks before the procedure. At this appointment I got the usual instructions about not eating or drinking anything after midnight the night before.

They went through basics of what would happen (an SVT episode is induced, then it's mapped so the doctor can see which circuit in the heart needs to be blocked). They talked to me about post-op recovery, how to care for the incisions, etc. The listed all the risks including the most likely one which is needing a pacemaker if the procedure goes wrong.

They also told me to pack an overnight bag for the hospital in case I had to stay. Apparently it's not common but it does happen. So it's best if the patient has some basic items already packed, just in case.

I was not given an exact time for my check-in until they called me the day before the procedure. They told me to arrive at 11:30 AM. Because this was rather late check-in they said I could drink clear liquids that morning as long as stopped at 8 AM.

I was happy to hear that. I drank a cup of black coffee and a glass of unflavored pedialyte that morning hoping to avoid that feeling of being dehydrated from not eating or drinking.

When I arrived I got into a hospital gown and they got the IV started. For some reason it took a few tries. Usually it's pretty easy to find my veins so I don't know why it was harder that day.

Then a heart monitor/EKG like device was attached with all the little stickers on my chest and torso. The hospital gown had a pocket in front for the device. It was a wireless device that displayed the heart data on the monitor in the room, and apparently also worked with monitors in the operating room.

Next they had to shave my groin area (bikini line) for the incisions. They did both sides just in case it was needed.

Shortly before the procedure I talked with the anesthesiologist. He said that sometimes a patient needs to be awakened because they can't induce an SVT episode while under anesthesia (drugs block the SVT rhythm in some patients). But this is rare. I'm happy to say that this was not needed in my case!

After a little while I was wheeled into the operating room. I've only had a couple other operations but both times the operating room was very bright and well lit. This time it was a very dark room with a lot of screens hanging from the walls and ceiling. At my pre-op appointment the physician's assistant had told me to expect this. He said it's like going into a room with a bunch of video game screens.

So I was prepared for the dark room, but it was still a strange experience. Since the procedure is done with remote cameras, and while looking at screens, it makes sense that they don't need bright light. What they need is really big screens with good resolution.

Before I went under anesthesia all these folks started putting a bunch of adhesive patches on my body. These were in addition to the small patches I already had for the basic heart monitor. Apparently these patches are used to map the abnormal heart rhythm. I had so many patches all over my body - on my back, chest, legs, even in my armpit! I can't remember them all! I kept finding adhesive from them in different places on my body for more than a week afterward.

Finally they put me under and I was out.

I woke up when they were wheeling me back to the recovery room. I remember looking at the clock and it was about 3:40 PM. I don't remember the start time very well - 1:45 PM?

My husband had been told the procedure would take more than 2 hours, probably closer to 3 hours, so he had left the recovery room area. But fortunately he was just returning (he thought he was early) as they wheeled me into the room.

The nurses told me I had to lie flat for at least 4 hours to make sure the groin incision healed up and was not bleeding. They wrote a list of milestones on the whiteboard. I don't remember the exact list but it was things like being able to eat and drink, not in pain, able to walk (although they do wheel you out to the car), and use the bathroom.

The cardiologist (electrophysiologist, actually) came by later and asked how I was doing. He confirmed that the procedure went well, no trouble inducing the SVT episode or finding how to block it. So the time was shorter than expected. The most pain I had at that point was from a neck incision which he said would probably be tender for a while. But other than that nothing was hurting.

The neck incision was pretty much the only surprise. I thought I was only going to have incisions in my groin. But for some reason (don't ask me why!) for my specific situation I also had to have a neck incision.

While I was waiting to be allowed to go I drank some water and ate half of a sandwich (peanut butter and jelly). I actually wasn't hungry but I figured I should eat something.

After 4 hours of lying flat a nurse helped me up so I could walk to the bathroom. I was still in the hospital gown. I was about halfway there when suddenly I felt warm liquid running down my right leg.

A lot of the heavy drugs had worn off by then but I was still feeling very groggy from the anesthesia. So my muddled thought process was, "Wait, is that urine? No, it can't be. What is happening?" I looked down and saw blood on the floor.

I was bleeding from the incision on the right side of my groin. Blood was coming out pretty fast, leaving pools of blood on the floor and drenching my hospital gown. It did not hurt and thankfully I was not scared, just confused. The nurse hurried me back to the room and I lay down on the bed. She knelt on the bed and started putting intense pressure on the incision to make it stop bleeding. (I had some big bruises in that area later!)

It took a while but the bleeding did stop. Then they put on a new dressing and tried to clean me up a bit.

My poor husband had to go into the other room to avoid fainting (he feels faint when he sees blood) which would have just compounded the problem.

He felt bad about leaving but I told him later that I was quite proud of him for being aware he might faint and then doing what he needed to avoid fainting. The last thing we needed was for him to fall and hurt himself!

After the bleeding was stopped they told me again to lie flat - stay still and don't raise my head at all - for at least another 90 minutes.

The bright side of all this is that the bleeding happened in the hospital instead of in the car or at home. That would be been a lot scarier. Before I was released they drilled me on what to do if this happened at home (lie flat, put pressure on wound, and call 911). I guess people can bleed out without realizing it. I understand because it did not hurt at all and I might not have realized how serious it was if not stopped quickly.

I was worried they'd make me stay there overnight but at about 9:45 or 10:00 PM they finally said I was cleared to go home. So I slowly got dressed and ready to go.

One nurse was nice enough to wheel me out to the parking garage, right to the car, rather than making my husband drive the car around.

It took me about 6 weeks before I was back to my baseline. I kept thinking that I was okay and then getting a sudden feeling of weakness or nausea - orthostatic intolerance.

I was not in a lot of pain. What hurt most was the neck incision. And there was some soreness around my heart. But the sharp chest pains that I've gotten since 1990-1991 (either from ME/CFS or OI - not sure of the cause) are much worse than anything I got from the procedure.

All in all, other than that one bleeding incident, which caused a delay in getting home that night (we weren't home until about 11 PM), the procedure went pretty smoothly.

I have not had any SVT episodes at all since the procedure. So it seems to have worked!

Note: Any edits after the initial post were done either to fix typos or to clarify something. No additional info added.