A-fib and Tennis

Any A-fib tennis players out there like me? I can usually play without any symptoms. I'd love to hear about your experiences and what advice you've received from your Doc.

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I don't play tennis (played a lot of badminton years ago), but I used to be a fairly competitive runner, and I've done a lot of higher-paced cycling on the road. I found that I worked harder at cycling for some reason and found the first two precursors to my eventual AF happening when on a bike.

That aside, my cardiologist advised me to continue to maintain my fitness and to try to not lose what I had. He insisted that neither of my new prescriptions, metoprolol, statin, and anti-coagulant, should adversely impact my ability to do so. I don't know if if was just me wishing to avoid a recurrence of AF (IOW my brain), or if it really was a personal reaction to one of the three, but my performance dropped quite a bit thereafter. I could still get my heart rate up to about 140, very high, say when climbing a long and steep set of outdoor steps overlooking a substantial bluff near the ocean, but I would not enter AF that way. If it happened to me, it happened at home, maybe later that day, but never during the exertion.

Thanks. I imagine cycling is more strenuous than tennis, especially at a senior age so that’s good to hear. Do you covert back to sinus on your own?

I was paroxysmal for several years, but my pantry was running a bit thin, and I seemed to be losing ground. I was to the point where I was desperate for a catheter ablation and got one in July of 2022. It didn't take, so to speak, so I had another, same electrophysiologist, in February of last year. Thankfully, this one 'took' and I have been in bliss ever since...knock on wood.

To answer you, I always converted on my own, but I was a wimp and would go to the local ER after several hours. Sho' nuff, within an hour or so, but to be fair often with more metoprolol, I would convert on the gurney and they'd send me home. Nobody here smirks or rolls their eyes when people like me confess to this experience, but they'll gently say that going to the ER is almost always a waste of resources by everyone who IS paroxysmal because they eventually will eventually convert.

Some sufferers have most/all of their AF at night shortly after they get into bed and relax. That must be a special brand of hell because I could count, 100%m, on reverting to NSR once I had been in bed a few minutes and had that first 'fog-out' or leg jerk. Literally without fail, whereas those night-time sufferers know what's coming with about the same horrible regularity.

If you are new to AF, and to this forum, we tell people that, quite a bit more often than not, your disorder will progress. You'll have more AF, need more or different meds, and there will come a time when it becomes truly alarming for you and intrusive...if it isn't already. We advise people to get on the consultation waiting list of a really busy, higly acclaimed, local electrophysiologist so that, if things begin a rapid decline for you, you won't have long to wait to get a more mechanical fix...a catheter ablation.