Just realizing that I may have had Afib for forty years!

Is this possible? I was diagnosed 13 years ago but looking back over the years, I remember sporadic instances of what felt like serious “spells,” where I felt like I was at risk of dying. After a few hours they resolved and of course, if they were indeed Afib, could not have been diagnosed afterward when I sought medical care. I don’t think I even knew what Afib was then though I realized that whatever was happening was likely cardiac related. No doc ever suggested Afib, probably because I was “young,” and there was nothing like an Apple watch or a Kardia available to check on the spot. As I think back, I remember being in circumstances that could be triggering for Afib in each instance.

Now that I have been treated by Dr. Natale and have such a quiet heart, I am really aware of the difference and am wondering if others suspect that they may have had very paroxysmal Afib for much longer than they thought?

I had two bouts of tachycardia during bicycle rides in the 12 years prior to my eventual diagnosis. The first was on a goat path in the Laurentian Mts of Ontario where I stopped to gain my breath and experiencing a rapid heartrate that did not diminish in rate for nearly five minutes, quite unlike my normal recovery that took perhaps 20 seconds or more. The second time was also during a bike ride, but this time on a road bike when I was stopped in traffic and awaiting a change of light at an intersection. A jerk behind me, safely ensconced in his pickup truck where his insecurities were masked, hollered out to me, "I sure hope I don't hit you with my truck." After educating him about two things, the location of the nearby RCMP depot and my right to a full lane of traffic in the absence of a designate adjacent bicycle lane, I found my heart pounding again, and once again not wanting to reduce its rate for several minutes.

Was it ever AF? Dunno. But it was definitely an abnormal rate, and alarming at the time. Neither episode repeated in the following days and months, so I quickly forgot them. My bad...in retrospect.

I'm sure that happens commonly. People who are asymptomatic get diagnosed incidentally all the time when a doctor happens to do an ECG for other reasons. People have strokes and only learn they have afib after the stroke.

That's why I've never understood why current practice guidelines discourage ECGs during routine physicals. Why wouldn't you do one? It's cheap, harmless, and takes maybe 2 minutes. If I were a PCP, I would do a baseline ECG on all new patients no matter what their age, and then if it's normal I would repeat them at 10-year intervals until their 40s at which time I'd switch to annual intervals. Finding asymptomatic afib in a 35-year old is an invaluable discovery, and it's not like afib is the only disease an ECG can detect.

You are not alone.


I wasn't diagnosed with Afib, until 2006, but I know for a certainty, that my first episode was Thanksgiving day 1980. Caffeine induced.

I went for years and eventually developed a panic disorder, which allowed the mind-body cycle to reinforce itself, even though doctors didn't "catch" any heart issues despite extensive cardiac testing.

It wasn't until I was able to get the panic under control, that it was finally diagnosed.

lisa
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So much of medicine is looking solely down the wrong end of the gun barrel, and that is really a pity for all of us---Shannon

I was diagnosed with AFIB at age 30. Now 74. No one back then could figure out why, I won't go into all the details over the years about treatments and causes. Recent conversations with EP's now point to a genetic flaw. Just dealt a bad hand.