I’m still a reporter, thankfully, so I cannot tell a fib. As for A-Fib, well…;-/

It is to laugh. Or cry. Or both. (As life often teaches us.)

We were watching Sunday morning TV (Rick Steves, First Presbyterian – the ‘ushe’) – and at one point heard a faint light squeal coming from somewhere.

It turned out to be my about 6-year-old APC UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) in my home office

I crawled beneath my desk to the cable spaghetti and mega-dust bunnies below, and the green/red alternating flashing button said what Perplexity confirmed – time to swap the battery, or much easier, replace the whole darn thing. Fortunately we live very close to Staples, and they had the same exact model, so we could recycle the old UPS and get the replacement in one swell foop.

Easy Button indeed!

But speaking of “uninterruptible power supplies” being problematically interruptible… in “nothing lasts forever” fashion…

Two days ago, after Deb and I figured out via my first Staples trip of the weekend that her 2nd monitor issue was a frozen, rebootable hub – not the monitor – Friday night was pretty good.

Until, say, an hour after I came to bed, around 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

I woke up, and guess what returned for the second time in 10 DAYS – a first in proximity, by far?

Yep, AFib. The bossa-nova heartbeat. My own green-red flashing light-squeal, without an easy visit to Staples for a battery swap.

I tried to react calmly – wasn’t rocking TOO bad, or panicking – got dressed, went to the bathroom, sat at the kitchen table and used my Kardia device (one of 2, the other is in my wallet, credit card-size!) to indeed confirm it was that dang AFib, back WAY too soon.

I already knew that my fine cardiologist wants me on the formerly “pill in a pocket” emergency fleccanide and Metropolol daily . But the order hasn’t arrived yet (rabbit hole avoided), so I took what I thought were both expired pills (turns out I learned later that one was the wrong bottle of something else! Would it have made a difference? Who knows?)

Anyhoo, Deb was thankfully doing better driving-wise so … no ambulance trip this time. But halfway there … well, I was starting to freak out, felt faint. When I got there, they quickly saw that the blood pressure was really low, heart rate really high. You can’t really pray or mindful-meditate your way out of THAT one.

So again, the sedation, a great ER team at St. Charles (some overlap) and I just about passed out before I passed out. And the “shock to the heart” worked.

Again.

Home by 4:30 or so and still got some sleep. (Our Sleep Number bed actually was pretty good, score-wise – it was just broken into two parts, Before and After.)

I’d already seen my cardiologist, a few days earlier, and on Friday laid on my side for about an hour of an echocardiogram, nice chat with a nice lady.

The rabbit holes on this stuff are infinite, as pervasive as this way-too-common issue is.

But after rocking and rolling through soooo many of the personal A-Fib stories on the thusly named subreddit – always interesting and helpful – I did my typical Nook dive and found a book, newly updated, called The A-Fib Cure. Two very well-versed docs made clear just how much the name wasn’t a simple come-on clickbait, there are many, many factors and variables at work, and they step through it all methodically and helpfully.

I’m very blessed to live in a day when an EKG is as close as the credit card-like Kardia in my wallet (and the app in my smartphone of course). No sweeter words after a 30-second test on the 2 fingertips than “Normal Sinus Rhythm” when I start feeling… weird, even fearsome. I’m sooo prone to overthinking.

Just 20-30 pages into the book, I already see A-Fib, besides being so common, being associated with some things (pills) I’ve taken by habit for decades, even though I’m really not sure they are needed. Trust me, these docs are very cautionary, saying TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR before making any major changes! So I sent a three-part note via MyChart – another blessing that suuurrrre beats “you are the 125th caller” or just … waiting to talk to someone.

Is it dehydration (Guess I have to start drinking my sparkling water – hey, I still really like some TASTE and carbonation, NOT sugar!) even when I “don’t’ feel thirsty”?) Is it… stress? (Let’s skip THAT infinite rabbit hole!) Happens usually around bedtime (though some daytime dozing and weirdness) so … is it the seemingly controllable sleep apnea? Will I still have to C-PAP? Oy.)

And can the new book, subreddit, Perplexity AI etc., help me ask the right questions of the right folks in coming days, and not need an old-fashioned “second opinion”?

Related side-note: Sure. I wish Facebook’s dang algorithm gave a SMIDGE of the attention these serious posts get to my more frequent, funner/funnier ones? Not that it’s not GREAT to hear from so many great family and friends! But my Suno songs and AI Fanboy Confessions and clever quips (well, I think so!) deserve a bit of “engagement” too! So I decided to blog instead;-)

Anyway, maybe my next song will be based on the ironic fact that the No. 1 Rule for a Life-Long Journalist is to “Never Tell A-Fib.”

(Rimshot.)

Hey, I’m still, thank God, a word guy, what did you expect?;-)