Three Cardioversions in Less Than a Month!
PLEASE READ THIS FIRST – THIS POST IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE
The following historical information is for interest only. It should in no way be thought of as medical advice applicable to any other individual. Medical science has moved on, and no two people have the exact same medical circumstances. I hope you find the information interesting, To see the “Introduction” to this series of posts, please click here.
Common abbreviations used by Trenna in this series:
AF – Atrial Fibrillation – (irregular heart beat that Trenna often got, and eventually was in permanently)
CVI – Cardiovascular Institute (where her cardiologist worked)
CVM – Canningvale Medical (where our GP worked)
C-V – Cardioversion (an electric shock treatment to restore regular heart rhythm)
There are numerous others, some are common medical abbreviations you can Google, others are Trennaisms (which is itself a Trennaism). If you get stuck on one either ask in the Comments section or use the Contact Greg form.
What Are These Cardioversions and What Does it Mean?
I’m continuing the publication of the documents Trenna wrote to record her medical procedures.
Here are three more “stories” of cardioversions. To refresh your memory, cardioversion is a procedure, done in hospital to correct irregular heartbeat – Atrial Fibrillation (AF) in her case.
A cardiologist performs the brief procedure once the patient is anesthetised. They stick a couple of paddles on the patient and zap them with a pile of electricity. If it doesn’t work they zap them again.
From what the cardiologists told us, Trenna’s heart always went into rhythm after one zap. The problem for her turned out to be that the time between having a cardioversion and her going into AF again got smaller and smaller.
So, in the second of these documents Trenna has posted a photo of her chest after one zap – it was quite badly burnt.
And in the third of these documents Trenna is fighting back tears as she is talking to Susan the cardiologist. Tren knows that it is only a matter of time before cardioversions would be useless.
She had three more after these ones, but then it was decided that they had lost their effectiveness.
From then on Trenna was in AF constantly.
I think all three documents are worth reading (along with the rest of the series) even if you aren’t interested in the medical side of this.
To go directly to the next instalment in this series, click here.