Good News x 2

Phil and Brian are still on a roll. They won their semis final doubles match yesterday 6-2, 6-3. Phil was very up beat about the way they played. His calf seemed to hold up ok and now if he can just make it through one more match. They play the defending champs, a great team in Tommy Connell and Tony Dawson, who beat Larry Turville and Neal Newman in three sets in the other semis. The match is today at 11:00 PST. I'll be a nervous wreck until I hear the results. I'll have to keep busy until I hear something.

Marilyn and I returned from Birmingham yesterday afternoon around 5:00. We were both so impressed with how well oiled and fine tuned the whole Kirklin Clinic operation is. Just as instructed, I showed up for my chest Xray and EKG at 10. I was in and out of both in less than 10 minutes. I then went right into my appointment with Dr. Kay. Dr. Kay's junior doctor in training (my title for him...he is doing his fellowship under Dr. Kay) was very thorough, very informative and very nice. He did all the preliminary work with history, questions, etc...and also reviewed all the records from Dr. Phlaum and Dr. Verma. Then Dr. Kay came in after being briefed by "junior". He too was extremely nice, and took a lot of time to explain and draw pictures of what is going on with my heart and answer all my questions. It appears that in the healing process from my first ablation, a small gap formed in one of the pulmonary veins that was cauterized and is allowing the miss firing cells to escape, causing continual afib problems. It also appears that I was born with an additional open electrical pathway that does not need to be there. So Dr.Kay will go in and take care of the gap and the extra pathway during the ablation. He feels like that in about 6 months I should hopefully be off all medications, which is what my ultimate goal is. I'm not thrilled about having another procedure. The one thing I remember the most about my last procedure was telling Phil that I don't want to ever have to do this again. But if I know this will take care of it, then I'm all for it. I asked what would happen if I didn't do the procedure and I really didn't like that answer at all....I would eventually go into permanent afib, and my risk of stroke was extremely high. Not a viable option at all. So now I wait to hear from Dr. Kay's office to set up the appointment. I have to be on a cumidan like drug for 2 weeks prior to surgery, and for 6 weeks post surgery. It's an over night stay in the hospital and then home. My guess is that it will be scheduled for May sometime. Dr. Kay did say that about 30% of ablation patients must go in for a second "touch up" ablation. Let's hope the second time is a charm!