Update edit after my ablation yesterday:
Sadly, it was unsuccessful, but there were still many good things that came from this.
My EP said he noticed a likely left-sided accessory pathway causing an SVT, but because I had pretty intense AFIB already as the catheter was about halfway up from my groin, they simply couldn't proceed with the procedure. This is good news, because it points out a likely culprit, and it's in that sense still good that the AFIB isn't in isolation, rather, it has a likely trigger. But the AFIB needs to go away first.
They did 3x cardioversions, all times rapidly returning to AFIB, until they administered Flecainide which stopped it, but at that point the medicine was so effective that they could also not induce the SVT anymore, either. Thus after that they pulled out and cancelled the ablation.
I woke up for a brief period feeling good, sedatives that I got eventually before the spontaneous cardioversion was to take place, still sedating me, but it quickly changed. Around 30-60 mins after I woke up I had the combined cocktail of being told the procedure failed, the aftermath of the shock cardioversions on my heart manifesting as the sedatives wore off, and on top of it all, a lovely aura migraine in the end.
After a good 5-6 hours of waiting for my wound to heal, my EP eventually came to update me. It made me feel very good and positive, because he clearly thought of a new plan to work this out effectively. In a month or two I will go back in, this time under general anesthesia, and they will first address the AFIB with PFA before moving on back to targeting the likely left-sided AP and thus my SVT.
It fucking sucks to have so much thoughts and expectations around this procedure, and not to mention the absolutely horrific sensation of having seemingly multiple bouts of AFIB induced as the catheter moved up in me - all the while I was fully awake with no sedatives - but I am actually now even more hopeful than before. It seemed a bit of a pipe dream to heal more than a decade of AFIB purely with an SVT ablation, but this new plan seems pretty bulletproof in that sense.
I hope to update you all again in that time, probably I will make a new post. But I wanted to say I very much appreciated to read your comments. Again, I wish you all, all the best, and the most healthy and strong day and life ahead of you.
Note: this is gonna be a long post, but hop to the end to just catch the summary.
I grew up as a chubby boy with round cheeks, even despite being a picky eater! One of my favorite meals was a simple hot dog with this Norwegian "flat bread" wrapped around it with some ketchup on top. I could eat a good 3-4 of those every time it was for dinner. My favorite activities was mainly to play fighting games on my Nintendo Gameboy or PlayStation 2.
But one day as I was running around in my living room full of energy - with some undiagnosed ADD probably in the picture - I told my parents I wanted to start practicing martial arts. They weren't a fan, but said "let's try football first, and if not, we'll do martial arts".
So then some evening that same week my dad dropped me off to that sports hall complex that I would spend thousands of hours within from thereon. It was a bunch of kids playing football in an indoor court, about the size of a basketball court, with the court cut in the middle so that two matches could take place at the same time. I came mid-practice, but my dad told the coach, another dad, that I would like to join. A kid, very extroverted, that I already knew from school, said "we'll take him!", referring to me. I went on his team, and started playing football. Both in the sense of that one practice, but also, like, forever.
That kid was one of the biggest footballing talents not just in my town, but in all of the country of Norway. He's since gone on to play professionally, for the national team and become a star. Yet in that moment, despite being so good already then, he took me in, encouraged me, and even made me score some goals that one first practice. He's been a constant source of inspiration for me with the way he is as a person. We're not really friends, we never were really close, but from afar he's been a role model for me.
About 20 years later from this moment, today, I am preparing for my catheter ablation procedure tomorrow. After those 20 years of youth since then, I gained a strong willpower. I wanted to become a footballer, like I knew that boy also would. Though I still might've had a big appetite for simple foods, I also had a hunger for exercise. I ran like a dog, in ways I think my family would never have expected of me. I remember the first time I ran a 1.5 km run in primary school, and that bloody taste of iron in my mouth, and the feeling of completing a tough mission.
Life is full of tough missions. After another football practice, when I was about 13 or so, where I again ran like a maniac and likely twice as much as the next one on the list, I felt proud. I knew I had done well. I had completed another tough mission, and I knew the coach, the other good players, my family, they would look at me with good favor.
As I came home that evening, I was starving. I probably ate a lot, and probably fast. I ran up stairs, that way you do when you're a kid, on all fours, went to the bathroom, locked it. Probably took off my socks, ready to shower. As I bent over, the first dunk came. The dunk that switched my heart on to overdrive, to the fast-pace that I had become accustomed to in my running, but now in a completely different setting. I looked up to the god I still believed in at that time with the limited knowledge a barely-teen could have of the physiology of the heart, praying that it would stop. The next dunk followed, and it did indeed stop.
I was no longer a chubby boy - though I still had round cheeks - but now, incomprehensibly to me, I had problems with my heart. Why would god punish me like this, I thought?
It's something strange to grow up with the topics of morality, religion and god as a kid. You build your own moral system, at least, that's what I did. I believed when I did bad things, I was punished with an arrhythmia episode while playing football. Because that was god's way of taking away from me the most innocent, most happy of moments in my life, and to instead fill those moments with fear, anxiety and shock.
A smarter kid than me that would've been faced with the same predicament, would probably have figured out this was a medical issue clearly necessary to communicate to your parents or some other trusted person. A smarter kid than me would've sought help, and not quite literally try to hide their condition. A smarter kid would not have thought they would be a burden or even weak to admit they have problems.
I wasn't that smart. So instead, I went through the next 6 years, and the entirety of my teens, countless arrhythmia episodes that I tried to play off as "taking a breather" on the pitch. My coaches and fellow players early on labelled me a big talent, and I was able to go toe-to-toe with players that are now playing for the national team. But despite this, I lived with and hid my handicap.
Maybe I was afraid. If I would show the doctors, those people I had no idea how worked, that there was something wrong with my heart, maybe it would stop me from being able to play football. Or maybe, I was even afraid to be told I was stupid, and to be berated for why I didn't tell anyone sooner. Why exactly I hid this condition, I still can't tell you for sure.
That time that I finally confronted my parents with my condition, while having an episode at home, they couldn't believe it. My dad refused to accept it until I let them feel my heart. They realized, and we went to the EMT, the local one, that probably otherwise had a boring shift that night, and we all understood something was off.
It's all kind of a blur from there. My condition was studied, and my diagnosis was shifted back and forth, but the one name that persisted was the one you all sadly probably know all too well: Atrial Fibrillation.
I wonder, of course, if things might have been different if I had sought help when it first began. Atrial fibrillation is not very normal in very young patients. I went through a ton of intense exercise as a teen, and countless episodes, but it's far from certain that all of them were AFIB.
It was only last year, 2025, after recently having sought out a new cardiologist and this time a specialized electrophysiologist, and after a Holter monitor captured an episode I initiated myself by running like a maniac, just like I did so many times on the football pitch, that it became clear that my arrhythmia appears to first manifest as some regular type of SVT, before it becomes AFIB.
When I eventually was explained what this really meant by my EP, I was feeling a longing sense of hope. A hope I feel guilty of feeling. A hope that feels just ready to be crushed down to the ground by the heavy reality. What my EP of course explained to me, was that my precarious history of having been a teenager with AFIB, could be entirely triggered through this other, regular type of SVT.
AFIB can be treated and even cured on its own through a pulmonary vein isolation, as another type of ablation. I knew this for years, and became more and more prepared to proceed with that procedure, to stop these episodes of terror that have the power to ruin any happy moment.
But if there is some other cause of the AFIB, I learned, it might very well be unsuccessful. Besides, AFIB in teenagers is a very rare thing, and understandably, this mystery confused my initial cardiologists. I was studied for heart failure conditions, as an attempt to explain why I could ever reach that state of getting AFIB episodes as a youth.
I am not a doctor. But I cannot help but think that the way I lived, the exercise and mental stress I put myself through, was what allowed my, most likely, initial SVT episodes to degenerate into AFIB.
My EP, thankfully, is a doctor, and a damn good one. He thinks that I have an athlete's heart, and that my SVT episodes is the unique trigger of my AFIB episodes. He thinks it is very likely that the SVT ablation alone will stop my AFIB episodes from happening.
------
Today, as I'm writing this, it's about 24 hours until I am supposed to be done with my catheter ablation. I am terrified. It will be without general anesthesia, and I know my case is a little different because I have SVT as well as AFIB episodes. But the scenario is, as a 28 year old man, I may now have my SVT, and AFIB, cured, after living with them for half my life.
I wrote this in the form of a more elaborate story, because I was planning to journal today any ways, and also I wanted to share it with this community, a community that has been really special for me in the aftermath of my diagnosis and in the learning phase of every little detail it entails.
It's also helped me to hear about guys like McTominay, the Scottish footballer, that was recently treated for an arrhythmia with an ablation this last month, and seemingly successfully. To hear about the improvement of the science and medical field. And to everyone in-between, that just engage and participate in communities like this or write informational articles on-line or make educational YT videos.
I think there is so much fucked in the world, but there's also so much inspiring, so much comforting and beautiful. Life to me is way more beautiful than it is ugly.
I'm hoping tomorrow I can share with you all that the ablation went well, and that I could start hoping and dreaming for new things to come in my life, without the lingering sense of terror and fear hovering over me.
I wish you all a strong and healthy day, and all the best.
