Too much arrhythmia

Day 198.

Looking back at the last few months since my diagnosis, I have had a new arrhythmia event about once a month. This has been less than ideal, to say the least.

I had my consultation with my cardiologist today. We discussed my latest ventricular fibrillation event, and he let me know that he had expected the arrhythmia to have subsided with sarcoidosis inflammation being inactive in my PET scan in September 2022.

A quick recap of ventricular arrhythmia over the last 6 months or so:

• 30 May 2022 - sustained ventricular tachycardia that lasted over an hour. 6 pm. At home.

• 21 July 2022 - three ventricular fibrilation events over the course of an hour. 6 am. At home. I fell down the stairs as a result of the first event.

• 9 August 2022 - ventricular tachycardia. 10 am. At home.

• 27 August 2022 - supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) that lasted 2 days. 7 am. At home.

• 15 October 2022 - ventricular tachycardia event. At home.

• 4 November 2022 - ventricular fibrilation event. 4 pm. At work.

• 6 December 2022 - ventricular fibrilation event. 8 pm. At home. I had just returned from a work event.

As a next step I am having an echo-cardiogram in January to see how my heart is doing now. The cardiologist also suggested that I may need to go for a follow up PET scan, but we will see what we see in the echo first.

Amiodarone

He is recommending that I start taking Amiodarone immediately. Amiodarone is an anti-arrhythmic medication which will hopefully stop the ventricular arrhythmias from happening.

Amiodarone does take a little while to build up in your body. There is a chance I might have another event before I reach the loading dose. I'm quite nervous about that happening again.

Let's hope it all gets sorted out over the next few days. My confidence levels are not high. But fingers crossed.