Coping with upcoming heart ablation

I was diagnosed with super ventricular tachycardia 6 years ago and refused the ablation to hopefully cure it due to absolute terror of anything medical. After I had very bad flu last xmas my heart problem worsened and whereas before my svt attacks were very short like 10 seconds although daily I had a few hospital visits and admissions when the svt attacks were coming every 10 mins for hours on end. Recently I had an attack of svt which changed to atrial fibrillation and lasted 5 hrs and nothing they did in hospital helped until it sorted itself.


My electrophysiologist/cardiologist has now listed me for urgent ablation although this could still be months. They do something called an EP study to trigger an attack and you are totally awake and unsedated for this. they go in your groin and thread 3 wires up to your heart. If they can trigger an attack and pinpoint the areas needing to be burnt away in your heart then they go on to do an ablation and give some sedation although don't knock you out totally.


As you can all appreciate I am beyond terrified. If the EP study fails to trigger an attack then they have to get you back later and try again. There is a risk of heart attack and stoke with ablation and it takes 12 weeks for heart to heal and you can get strange things happening with heart in that time I have heard.


Just wondering if anyone else with health anxiety and a terror of any medical proceedure, even seeing a blood pressure moniter, has had to have risky and unpleasant ops/proceedures done on them and how they coped.

Hi

This is just a courtesy reply to let you know that your post was moved from its original place to a sub-forum that is more relevant to your issue.

This is nothing personal - it just enables us to keep posts about the same problems in the relevant forums so other members with any experience with the issues can find them more easily.

Please also read this post:

http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=213239

I know this is a old post but wo wondering how you got on ? I'm going tomorrow for a ablation for afib and svt and I'm absent terrified.