New Hip, AFIB and being your own advocate

Sometimes you have to push back to stay active in your 60’s, 70’s and 80’s

I had what I thought were groin problems. Then I spent two years going to physical therapy, seeing my general practitioner, hernia surgeon, getting X-Rays, Cat Scans and finally an MRI. When I complained to my primary doctor about continued hip/groin pain, an X-Ray was taken and they said all is good with my hip. Hmmmm

The break that lead to what I hope is the solution was a suggestion by a friend of mine to go see Mayo Sports Medicene. Their first diagnostic tool was also an X-Ray. The X-Ray in their opinion was not conclusive so they scheduled a MRI. That was the silver bullet. Turns out I have moderate to significant arthritis which cannot be detected in an X-Ray.

Mayo has their own surgeon team to do hip replacement but the surgery is done in Rochester (I live in Minneapolis) and I don’t have any references to those people. I had my right knee replaced about 4 years ago so I called that doctor to request a consult and likely surgery. That doctor is crazy busy and books out 5-6 months for surgery. That would wreck my sailboat racing season, so what to do? This is where the value of friendships come into play. One of my skiing friends is operating on 2 new hips AND two new knees. He raved about his surgeon. Then days later, a couple in a bible study (one of which is a retired doctor) said one of them is having a hip replacement with the same surgeon. This alternative doctor didn’t have such a long wait.

So I made the consult appointment with a shorter than normal lead time due to these connections. Then it turns out I have my own connection to this doctor via the Yacht Club I belong to. The doctor did me a HUGE favor by scheduling the surgery one month out.

Part of the process is to have a “pre-operative” doctor appointment with your primary doctor. I thought everything was proceeding as normal and after the EKG the doc entered the room and announced I have Atrial Fibrillation (AFIB). At first I thought it was very bad joke, but then the pieces fell into place. On the last ski trip I wrote about (whined about) my skiing was not up to snuff. A hurting hip along with excessive huffing and puffing. I also mentioned to my ski buddies that while lying in bed I often had challenges being short of breath. Plus the fact that my mother had AFIB.

Turns out AFIB is a pretty common occurrence and there is a well worn path to “manage” the condition primarily with drugs or to more aggressively treat the situation buy “shocking” the heart back to regular rhythm (cardio version) and or having a procedure known as Ablation where the misbehaving electrical circuits are identified and “burned” into oblivion so they can no longer fire and confuse your heart into misfiring. I did one cardio version, it worked but I slipped back into AFIB a few weeks later. I now am on a different medication and will have a second cardio version this coming Monday.

Keep in mind I’m not a doctor so use this information as an interesting story or a jumping off point to your own research with your own medical team. The point is to be curious. Don’t take the first medical diagnosis as gospel truth. Lean in, keep digging until you are satisfied the answers make sense to you.

I am writing a portion of this post this from the hospital room after my hip replacement surgery. I’m told it went well and I fully intend to be in my MC Scow sail boat competing against my fellow club members this summer. However, now three weeks post surgery things are not going as fast as I would like. It seems the mental image of my physical health is perhaps from 30 years ago. So trying to patient with my hip recovery.

Fixing AFIB is another journey happening at the same time. I’m hopeful of getting my heart back into a normal rhythm by the time the sailing season starts. I will make another post on the AFIB journey after the AFIB finish line has been reached. Perhaps not a finish line, but a decent place in the journey at least.

I keep thinking of this quote, “The older I get, the better I was.”