I took steps recently to deal with two medical conditions.
SVT (supra-vasicular tachycardia). I've had occasional incidents of rapid heartbeat for at least a decade, but in the last few years the incidents required emergency medical attention. I'd been misdiagnosed in Florida as having atrio-fibrillation, but it turns out I had SVT.
SVT is caused, in the doctor's words, by an "extra passageway" in the heart. In the drawing he showed me, it looked like an electrical wire about 3/4 of an inch long. When things go awry, the electricity that causes the heart to beat travels out of the heart and into this wire, but the wire conducts the electricity right back into the heart. Short circuit? Double whammy? The heart goes bonkers.
On April 18 I went to the Heart Hospital in Albuquerque for an "ablation" (surgical removal) of the wire. A catheter is inserted into the groin, then into a major blood vessel; it is guided up to the heart, finds the offending wire, and burns it away. They call this a surgical procedure rather than surgery, but it requires great skill from the surgeon. I was under "conscious sedation" for three hours but the only thing I was aware of was the heat in my chest (I'd been warned about it) when the wire got zapped. After a four-hour observation period, I was free to go home, but I stayed overnight because of the late hour.
Enlarged prostate. This condition prevents the passage of urine from the bladder into the urinary tract, because the top of the urinary tract is squeezed shut. The solution (sometimes called an "ablation" as well) is to introduce a catheter into the urinary tract and, with a laser, vaporize the offending tissue.
I had the surgery (technically a cystoscopic trans-urethral resection of the prostate, or TURP) on July 24.
(I kept this description short because the subject causes most people to cringe -- "eeeewww" -- and induces some men to puke.)
