A Life on Hold

Book excerpt: You're going about your daily routine when you suddenly feel an odd squirming in your chest. You quickly realize that it is your heart, flopping around like a fish out of water. What do you do? You probably panic! Maybe you also experience dizziness, nausea, or shortness of breath, or maybe you have no other symptoms at all. But it's still very scary because... it's your heart! This is how chronic atrial fibrillation starts for many of us, and those who develop it often have little to no prior medical history to speak of. Once the demon a-fib has set in, though, we soon find our lives redirected down a dark uncharted path, our days consumed by vain attempts to divine the elusive origins of this mysterious malady as we desperately seek a panacea that can give us back our "normal"... or at least some way to weaken the grasp that this unwelcome beast now has on our lives. Through it all, we put on performances of a lifetime for the rest of the world, acting as though all is well while coping as best we can with this invisible disorder... one that he who has never suffered through it cannot possibly understand. Try as we might, though, our lives and relationships will surely end up the worse for wear. Within the pages of this book lies one man's personal account of how this condition impacted his life, how he managed to overcome it, the valuable knowledge that was acquired along the way, and the permanent marks that the journey has left on his subsequent existence. This medical autobiography is written in an informal first-person conversational style with accounts and information presented in such a way that it should be easy for just about everyone to understand and relate to.