Our atrial fibrillation patient resource, StopAfib.org, is featured in Patient Web Exchanges Provide Benefits at the Physicians’ Financial News web site. The article is about the value of these patient web exchanges for doctors and patients. Read more…
The Journal of Atrial Fibrillation is a brand new journal focused on irregular heart rhythms and on improving treatment of atrial fibrillation patients.
Dr. Andrea Natale is the Editor-in-Chief, and dozens of other well-known EPs and surgeons from around the globe serve as editors.
They will be adding patient info over time, but the first issue of the journal is up currently.
Learn more about it, including some of the well-known EPs and surgeons that are editors and the topics in the current issue, or just go straight to the journal.
The Atrial Fibrillation Association in the
I’m mad and must post this before I explode. Today alone I’ve answered a dozen e-mails or comments from folks suffering with atrial fibrillation around the same theme—their clueless doctors!
Now don’t get me wrong, there are so many good doctors out there. And the doctors to those folks who e-mailed me are probably very good, too. The problem is that most of our doctors don’t truly understand what afib does to us. And part of it may be that we don’t communicate it so that they will understand. So it’s time for us to stand up and tell them exactly what afib does to us.
Afib takes a huge toll, not just physical, but emotional and financial as well. Not just on us, but on our families, too. Here are just a few of those things.
In my case, my family had to travel with me as they couldn’t let me out of their sight for fear I’d have blood clots and a stroke while off by myself (due to blood clots and a near-stroke with my very first afib episode). Now that’s expensive!
But we don’t talk about the financial impact—it’s just too embarrassing. We have to change that. If doctors don’t know this, they will just diddle around, experimenting, figuring that they will eventually find a treatment that works while we deal with meds with nasty side effects that make us feel like crap, meds that quickly stop working, or being on Coumadin and looking like we’re battered. We’re the ones suffering, and our doctors just don’t realize what it’s doing to us. Give us an afib cure already!
And while they’re fiddling, Rome is burning. Afib begets afib–the longer you have it, the worse it gets, and the harder it becomes to solve. I hear from so many people that just can’t get it solved because they have had it for so long.
As a patient, I tell my doctors that I want to know all of my options so I can make the decision. And I want to research all the pros and cons and talk with others before I do. As my doctor, you should expect no less from me than to be an informed patient. Help me to be so.
I see many folks just going around their doctors and self-referring to surgeons and EPs (electrophysiologists are cardiologists that specialize in heart rhythms) looking for an atrial fibrillation cure. They shouldn’t have to. Our doctors need to work with us as a team to help us solve this problem. We have to help them truly understand how afib affects us and what it is doing to our families as well.
Life is too short to live it in afib.
So, what about you? What have you experienced? Does your doctor really understand and help you solve this problem?
Welcome to the Atrial Fibrillation Blog, sponsored by StopAfib.org.
This blog is for talking about living with atrial fibrillation (afib) and ways to deal with it. If your heart has ever felt like a flopping fish, a bag of wiggly worms, or fluttering butterflies, you may have atrial fibrillation, the most common irregular heartbeat. You can find out more about how to tell at StopAfib.org.
If you or a loved one suffers from atrial fibrillation, please join us on a journey of exploration to help us wipe out afib.
