Meeting Dr. Natale & Shannon

Hello everyone,
Yesterday, I drove 2 hours from Los Angeles to La Jolla for Dr. Natale's consultation.
Our meeting was rather quick. They did a quick EKG on me, then Linda Couts (the Nurse Practioner) and Dr. Natale came in to talk.
Dr. Natale said that since I'm young (48 y.o) and paroxysmal, the standard PVI should do the trick.
It appears more like I asked questions, and they answered rather than they did their own speech. Anyway, I found Dr. Natale and Linda to be very nice and personable. Since Dr. Natale is only at Scripps Hospital 2 days in a month, the earliest date they can give me is sometime in December and yet to be confirmed. The highlight of my trip down to San Diego is actually getting to meet Shannon. He was there for his own medical reasons and by chance, I got to meet him. Shannon was kind and patient enough to wait around for me to finish my meeting and took some time to talk to me. It was a pleasure meeting him. Thank you Shannon for taking the time to explain things and getting to know each other. I did tell Dr. Natale and Linda about this forum and how we feel about them. They were delighted. When I left Dr. Natale, I made a joke to him that our USA soccer team would advance to the next round in the World Cup and Italy might not. As I walked away, I yelled out "Go USA! Go USA!" with a smile on my face. And this was before Italy played today and lost to Uruguay which ended Italy's journey. I hope Dr. Natale is not so heart broken.

Shannon, I hope you have a great time down here in San Diego. Thanks again and I hope to meet you again in the near future.

Duke

Hi Duke,

Great to hear about your apt. and being able to meet Shannon.

Just Curious, Are you going to schedule the ablation? I'm 50 , paroxysmal, get episodes now about once a month, in good shape and have had afib for about 8 years. The"Strategy" has helped me , but I'm getting worn down by my "events" even though they are somewhat infrequent, I think about it everyday. I would like to be able to return to exercising moderately +, like mountain biking , some running, etc. I exercise lightly to moderately now, but I always feel like I'm on the edge. I won't return to racing triathlons, but I love the feeling of running through the woods and biking up a mountain trail.

Anyway, Just wondering... I've seen Dr Schweikert twice and he said a PVI should do the trick for me too.

John

John: Yes, I do plan to proceed with the ablation. I have to work out the date that they have for me.
As I mentioned before in other posts that I'm just tired of watching out for triggers and remembering to take so many supplements and can't do this and can't do that, so I plan to have an ablation. From what I read and heard, for the paroxysmal affibers, the ablation has a very high success rate, like 80% if I'm not mistaken.

Currently, I still can exercise normally which I do almost everyday, like jogging 3 miles each time. However, my episodes happened quite frequent lately. If the episodes don't happen often, like most of you on this forum, I might not want the ablation. But, they just come too much, and too frequent, no matter what I do.

Anyway, please keep in touch. I hope if you decide to proceed with the ablation, everything would be fine for you.

Duke

I waited 4 years and tried everything, wanted a FIRM ablation but had a stroke.
Then Shannon sent Natale to NYC one May 28 last year and after meeting the Maestro for 45 mins he asked me if I had some free time this afternoon......??????....sure I said with a dumb smile, what's on your mind......and off I went to OZ and got ablated by The Man! No hesitation just elation as I walked past Natale sitting on a stool, yapping away in Italian probably from someone in the home country, a confident nod as I looked over to him.

End of Story!

McHale

McHale - what a great story!!

Duke - glad you went to meet Dr. N in San Diego and also ran into Shannon!

George

Hi Duke,

It was a pleasure meeting you as well! Good call to set that date at Scripps with Dr Natale, your case is very straight forward and you'll be very glad you took this major step toward putting all this behind you and getting on with you life without AFIB such a burden and nuisance for you going forward. What a relief!

With your ongoing episodes inspite of a good effort with the Strategy, now is the best possible time to get this taken care of without letting procrastination take over again as it is so easy to fall back into.

No worries too Duke, I saw Dr Natale the next day as well when getting a 3D-TEE follow up to my Lariat and consoled him about Italy's loss to Uruguay in the World Cup and he took it with a resigned smile and a 'that's okay' . :-)

Keep up the supplements and good diet leading up to the ablation as it can help some in preparation for a smooth experience.

Take care until we meet again.
Shannon

Great Story McHale! I wish I could have one like that, no time to worry or have second thoughts!

John

Thanks Duke, Unless something miraculous happens in the next 3 months, I'm going to go for it. I'm tired of the supplements too. Not that I will stop them, but the feeling if you miss something it's going to lead to an event. Or worse, the anxiety that I have when I don't know if I should exercise and potentially ruin the day if I have something planned later. Although, the PIP approach which I just implemented 2 months ago has turned what is usually a 18-24 hour episode into a 2-3 hour episode. Silly of me to resist using those medications, I would have significantly decreased my afib burden over the past 8 years.

John: I am resisting to take any medications. My episodes often are self converted and last up to max 3 hours. They are bothersome, but manageable. During the episodes, I often take my own pulse by using the free app on my Iphone or sometimes by manual count, and the rate is not that high (I think), perhaps up to low 90's and occasionally up to 100's, but it's the irregular beating that is annoying. Anyway, that's where I'm at now. No medications (CHAD score 0) and I just take magnesium, taurine, fish oil, COQ10 and potassium by food and low sodium V8. I think (I'm guessing) when I consume foods that have too much sodium, it often triggers the beast. Sometimes, I just go crazy trying to figure what triggers the beast. Just when I thought I came up with a good explanation, logic and/or reason why the beast comes, then when I tried to correct the problem, but the beast still comes, then I continue guessing again for new explanations. And so, I'm just tired of it, tired of trying to figure what's causing it and correcting it. On and on.
Do you all know what I mean?

Duke

I would like to chime in here and say that I made the mistake of waiting, and ended up with more and more frequent Afib, and quite a bit of fibrosis as a result. As I had Afib for 10+ years before going for the ablation, I ended up needing a LAA isolation - which meant a likely need for a "touch up" (which I just had) and a good chance of life long blood thinners (which I'm on now). Had I acted earlier on, I made have avoided the need to go into the LAA and had a simpler procedure and no need for blood thinners for the long term.

I would say that if you're tired of waiting for another event to "hit", like most of us are/have been, I would go for the abltation. It's really not much of a recovery (the worst part was lying on my back for 6 hours - that was hard for me as I have back problems)...but that's about it. WELL worth it in my humble opinion. As I trust Dr. Natale more than anyone else to do a great job, I traveled to Texas from NY - and would recommend that anyone going for an ablation either consider that or choosing one of the other top EP's that have been recommended on this Board.

Best to you ~ Barb