Aside from the haunting lyrics of the old 1970’s Bee Gee’s tune, the question still remains, how do you really mend a broken heart? I found out last week. But let me share a little background before I dive into my experience. For several years my heart has been giving me a bit of trouble. It probably goes back even decades. I’ve known that my heart has been sensitive to certain medications that made my heart race and pound. Occasionally over the years, my heart would begin racing on its own, without the aid of drugs. While we were on our mission in Hawaii, I began having more frequent episodes that were then accompanied with dizziness and lightheadedness. I figured it was just part of getting older and I ignored it because it eventually went away. In the last year, the episodes became more frequent, more intense, and lasted for longer periods. The dizzy spells intensified as well. I decided it was time to see a doctor.

He put me on a heart monitor that I wore for three weeks, night and day. I received a report one day that I was clocked at 205 beats/minute for over 2 ½ hours, and that the doctor felt it was serious. He put me on drugs to calm the arrhythmia and strongly recommended I see a specialist. The only problem was that side effects of the drugs included dizziness and lightheadedness. Remember I just wrote that those were my symptoms too. I seemed to be always dizzy, and I didn’t know if I was experiencing symptoms or side-effects.

It took a long time to get an appointment with an electrophysiologist, a specialized branch of cardiology. He offered me several options. One was to continue with the drugs for the rest of my life, which I flat out declined right then and there. His next option was a cardiac ablation for SVT (Supra Ventricular Tachycardia). He ran down the list of risks associated with this procedure, the last being death. It wasn’t a difficult choice. I didn’t want to be on the drugs any longer than necessary. Two weeks later, I had a date in the catheter OR at Utah Valley Medical Center.

The surgery did not unfold at all like I was expecting. My morning started with registration, a blood draw, and then I was taken to my chamber which served as both pre-op and recovery room. The first instruction from the nice lady nurse was to take off all my clothes so she could shave me. I was shaved from the neck to the knees, front and back. I now look like a 12-year-old boy. Fun times!

I lived in Italy for two years in the 1970’s as a missionary. We visited a lot of churches and viewed many artworks representing the catholic faith. While I was being wheeled down the halls of the surgical unit to the operating room on my transport bed, and watching the fluorescent lights pass by overhead, an image from my early years in Italy came back to mind. I suppose it represents the anxiety I felt about a doctor digging into my heart to repair an arrhythmia. This is the image that came to mind:

Entering the operating room, I was greeted with grunge rock-n-roll music by Nirvana. One of the attendants asked what kind of music I liked, and if this would do. Before I could reply that I would prefer a little Choir at Temple Square, he said, “We prefer music that would agitate you, would this work?” I confirmed to him that this would indeed agitate me.

I’ve been through surgical procedures in the past, a rather significant one in November. In these previous surgeries, I was placed in a deep sleep once in the operating room and then woken up in a recovery room when it was all over. I was grateful I was unconscious for the gory stuff. I fully expected a similar experience for this procedure. Imagine my surprise when the doctor informed me that he wanted me awake and alert throughout the entire operation (thus the grunge rock-n-roll music to agitate me). Not only did I have the image of my heart full of daggers and knives, but I would be awake for all of it, which now reminded me of Heironimus Bosch’s painting of the Garden of Earthly Delights.

He explained that my type of arrhythmia was tricky to track down. If they sedated me too much, he might not be able to induce the palpitation and locate its site of origin. He wanted me to be as comfortable as necessary without losing consciousness. I could hear them talking and see all their movements through my peripheral vision. There was enough equipment in the way, and I was laying on my back, so I couldn’t really observe the placement of all the daggers.

I was given local anesthesia where they entered an artery in my right groin, although not nearly enough in my opinion. There were four points of insertion in that artery. Of the entire process, that was by far the site of the most pain and discomfort I felt during the two-hour procedure.

The doctor was in my heart before I ever knew it. It was an odd sensation feeling his tools bumping around inside my heart, but there was no pain. He stimulated various areas where he suspected the arrhythmia was coming from. The stimulus felt like he was trying to jump start an engine that was already running. Every once in a while, I felt additional heartbeats happening, and then a rush when the arrhythmia began. Once the area was mapped and he understood where the faulty electrical signals were coming from, he inserted more tools through my groin (more pain and discomfort) and began cauterizing nerves to break the signal path. It was tricky because my arrhythmia was coming from the normal induction site where the signal is supposed to come from. If he burned too far, he would interrupt the good path, and I would be placed on a pacemaker for the rest of my life. I didn’t understand any of this until after the operation.

Once he felt good about his work, he instructed a nurse to give me a dose of a drug that mimicked adrenalin and push my heart into high gear and attempt to induce another arrhythmia, which he was able to do. Therefore, he had to return with his soldering iron and do a little touchup burning. Then back to the adrenalin rush to see if he could reignite the burners, which he couldn’t do the second time. His work was done and he left. All that remained was for the junior staff to clean up afterwards, remove all the equipment from my groin artery (more pain and discomfort), and wheel me back to recovery.

I somehow feel gypped, not a wink of sleep the entire time. Recovery went well and quick, probably because we didn’t have to wait for the anesthesia to wear off. The doctor feels confident that I am cured. Other than a follow up visit in two months, he says I’ll probably never see him again.

I have to take it easy for the next few days so as not to blow out the plugs in my groin and start a major bleed. From what I can tell, my heart feels fine. I’m off all my medications, hopefully for good.