n a hot July day, I was talking to a co-worker when I felt a frighteningly familiar pounding in my heart, beating as though I were sprinting, but not steady. More like my heart was a trout, lying on a dock in bright sun, flopping and fighting for its life. Like a toddler banging on a piano. My breath became short, and dizziness and panic kicked in. I popped meds prescribed to me for the occasion, but to no avail. This was going to be a trip to the emergency room. Again.

I have a handful of similar stories starting in my 20s and spread out over three decades. I went years without an episode and I had times when it would happen a couple of times a year. Meds would sometimes work, but I was always debilitated the next day. A half-dozen times, the meds didn’t work, and I would have to let the emergency room physicians fix it. I had a battery of cardiac tests, all showing normal, healthy heart structures. But when my paroxysmal atrial fibrillation kicked in on vacation, in Disney World, while overlooking the Magic Kingdom from the roof of the Contemporary Resort, enough was enough. I called my St. Clair cardiologist and asked to be placed on Dr. Jeffrey Liu’s schedule for a cardiac ablation.

On Valentine’s Day this year, fittingly enough, Dr. Liu, an electrophysiologist, threaded a catheter through an artery in my groin and ran it up to my heart, where he used radio waves to destroy tissue and create a pattern of scars around my pulmonary vein. This “pulmonary vein isolation” procedure would stop disorganized signals from my atria from making my heart beat funky, saving me from ending up in a hospital bed convinced I was dying.

I have had six blissful months, including one completely relaxing vacation, without trout chest. I don’t want to jinx anything. Sometimes patients need a tweak of this procedure, and I’ve accepted that may need to happen. Right now, I feel nothing but gratitude for Dr. Liu, his physician assistant, Kayla Bellhy, and  nurse Betty Strotz, for calming my freaked-out self. This team gave me my life back … just SEVEN minutes from my house.

We should all be grateful for St. Clair Health, Mt. Lebanon’s largest employer and a real asset to our community. Please read my story. I put my whole heart into it.