u/BeatsThatMatter

Hey hey folks =)

Yes r/PVCs is more of my home - it has been the overwhelming majority of the challenges I have dealt with. But I also have dealt with AF and had an AF ablation as well. So I had posted this over on r/AFIB and a lot of people found it helpful, for a variety of reasons. Wanted to post over here as well.

Important that we patients are educated about these things because it is increasingly the case that, in many cases, patients are not being given all of the information they need to make an informed decision about their health.

---

I want to state this right off the bat for this post: this is not medical advice. I'm not your doctor. I'm not telling you whether to get this procedure or not.

What I am is someone who has spent a decade as a healthcare industry veteran, lived through 5 ablations - the last one a Farapulse pulsed-field procedure from Boston Scientific for ventricular tachycardia related to an ARVC diagnosis - and along the way developed the literacy to read clinical trials, understand how they're funded, and follow the professional debates that happen in cardiology circles that almost never reach patients.

This post is about closing that gap. Because the gap is costing people their lives.

What is Watchman?

If you have AFib and have been told you're a candidate for stroke prevention, you've probably been offered two paths: a daily blood thinner (DOAC - Eliquis, Xarelto, Pradaxa), or a procedure called Left Atrial Appendage Closure (LAAC), most commonly done with a device called the Watchman FLX, made by Boston Scientific.

The pitch: a one-time procedure seals off the small pouch in your heart where most AFib clots form. Eventually get off blood thinners for life. Sounds like a win.

Here's what the brochure leaves out.

The trial history is uncomfortable reading

The Watchman went through FDA review three separate times between 2009 and 2015. The two pivotal trials - PROTECT-AF and PREVAIL - were the basis for approval.

What most patients don't know:

• PROTECT-AF initially showed 50% higher ischemic stroke rates in the device arm versus warfarin
• PREVAIL failed its first primary efficacy endpoint - specifically because of higher strokes in the Watchman group
• By the third FDA panel in 2014, updated data showed the stroke gap had gotten worse, not better
• The final risk/benefit vote was 6 to 5 with one abstention - one of the narrowest approvals in recent device history
• The FDA approved it four months later anyway

None of that is in your consent form.

And critically - both trials compared Watchman to warfarin, an older blood thinner most of us aren't even prescribed anymore. The device was approved having never been directly tested against the DOACs that would become the actual real-world alternative.

That comparison didn't happen for another decade.

Why trial funding matters: the two 2026 trials

In March 2026, two major randomized controlled trials were published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine - arguably the most credible medical journal in the world. They reached nearly opposite conclusions. Understanding why tells you everything about how evidence gets shaped.

CLOSURE-AF - funded independently, no device industry money:

• 912 high-risk AFib patients randomized to Watchman vs. best medical therapy (primarily DOACs)
• Watchman failed to achieve noninferiority - meaning it could not prove it was as good as the medication
• The device arm showed numerically higher major bleeding and cardiovascular death
• The lead investigator - previously a LAAC advocate - publicly stated he would change his practice

CHAMPION-AF - funded by Boston Scientific, manufacturer of Watchman:

• Met the noninferiority threshold on its composite endpoint
• Reported lower overall bleeding in the device arm - the commercial headline
• But buried in the data: ischemic stroke - the thing the device is specifically designed to prevent - was higher in the Watchman arm: 3.2% versus 2.0%
• The noninferiority margin critics describe as "generous" - statistically chosen to make the bar easier to clear
• Boston Scientific framed the results as a pathway to expand the eligible patient population from 5 million to 20 million people

Same journal.
Same month.

One independent, one manufacturer-funded.

One found it inferior.
One found it non-inferior.

Ask yourself: which result do you think you'd hear about in a consult room at a hospital that does these procedures?

The financial picture you deserve to understand

I've spent over a decade in healthcare. I know what the revenue architecture looks like. I want to be blunt about this because it matters:

A Watchman procedure generates substantial facility fees, cath lab utilization, echo imaging, and follow-up visits. A DOAC prescription generates a pharmacy copay.

Boston Scientific's stock dropped nearly 18% in a single session in late 2025 primarily on concerns about Watchman growth stalling. After CHAMPION-AF, management announced they were pursuing an FDA label expansion - which would unlock broader Medicare reimbursement and dramatically increase the billable population.

This is not a conspiracy. It's just a business.

But it's a business operating inside a healthcare system where you are the customer, and where the incentives don't always point toward the most conservative, evidence-based recommendation.

The real-world outcomes data

The clinical trials are one thing. Here's what actually happened to real patients:

A 2024 study of Medicare beneficiaries - published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes - found:

• 44% were dead within 5 years of Watchman implantation
• 15% had major bleeding events at 5 years
• 7% had ischemic stroke at 5 years

That 5-year mortality is roughly double what the pivotal trials showed. The difference? Real patients are sicker than trial participants. Trial enrollment is curated. Your cath lab is not.

Additionally, roughly 1 in 5 patients has a residual leak around the device after implantation - and leaks are associated with higher stroke rates, not lower. This is called peri-device leak, and it is a documented, peer-reviewed finding.

The procedural risks you should know before signing

From CLOSURE-AF - the independent trial:

• Cardiac tamponade: ~1.1%
• Major bleeding requiring transfusion: ~4%
• Procedure-related TIA: ~0.5%
• Procedure-related death: ~0.44%

These are not trivial numbers for a procedure whose long-term benefit over a daily pill remains, at best, contested.

Questions to ask before you consent

If you or someone you love is being offered a Watchman procedure, these are the questions that matter:

1. "Am I able to take long-term DOACs?" If yes - why is a procedure being recommended over medication?
2. "What does the CLOSURE-AF trial show, and why doesn't it change your recommendation?"
3. "What is my actual procedural complication risk based on your center's real-world volume data - not trial data?"
4. "What happens if the device leaks?"

A physician who is giving you an honest, patient-centered recommendation will welcome these questions.

Who Watchman may genuinely be appropriate for

I want to be fair. The procedure has a real, if narrow, evidence-based role:

• Patients with documented contraindications to long-term anticoagulation - prior life-threatening bleed, intracranial hemorrhage, serious DOAC intolerance
• Patients where the bleeding risk of anticoagulation genuinely outweighs the stroke prevention benefit

Not my opinions. Not a doctor. It is simply what the data reports.

For those patients, the conversation is different. The problem is the procedure is being offered far beyond that population - to patients who can tolerate DOACs - in a system with financial incentives that make "procedure" more attractive than "prescription."

Why I'm writing this

I have five ablations behind me. I've sat in consult rooms. I've read the trials. I've seen Watchman brochures all over the place. I've watched the debates happen in professional forums while patients sit in waiting rooms with no idea the debate exists.

The professionals arguing about this in the New England Journal of Medicine are largely talking to each other.

You deserve to be in that conversation before you sign a consent form.

Do your research. Stay informed.

Your heart is worth the extra 30 minutes.

Have any questions - happy to answer what I can.

If I had to guess? Litigation is coming. Some already has.

More is almost an absolute certainty.

I posted this over on r/AFIB

https://www.reddit.com/r/AFIB/comments/1t8u24f/what_the_professionals_are_debating_about/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Copy of post below. Spent plenty of time in device distribution. Think it is a shame right now that patients very clearly are not being informed properly about this device.

And generally, I am a fan of Boston Scientific. Farapulse changed my life. This device and its utilization deserve far more scrutiny, and before consents are signed, that scrutiny should be made visible to patients.

----

Hey hey folks =)

I want to state this right off the bat for this post: this is not medical advice. I'm not your doctor. I'm not telling you whether to get this procedure or not.

What I am is someone who has spent a decade as a healthcare industry veteran, lived through 5 ablations - the last one a Farapulse pulsed-field procedure from Boston Scientific for ventricular tachycardia related to an ARVC diagnosis - and along the way developed the literacy to read clinical trials, understand how they're funded, and follow the professional debates that happen in cardiology circles that almost never reach patients.

This post is about closing that gap. Because the gap is costing people their lives.

What is Watchman?

If you have AFib and have been told you're a candidate for stroke prevention, you've probably been offered two paths: a daily blood thinner (DOAC - Eliquis, Xarelto, Pradaxa), or a procedure called Left Atrial Appendage Closure (LAAC), most commonly done with a device called the Watchman FLX, made by Boston Scientific.

The pitch: a one-time procedure seals off the small pouch in your heart where most AFib clots form. Eventually get off blood thinners for life. Sounds like a win.

Here's what the brochure leaves out.

The trial history is uncomfortable reading

The Watchman went through FDA review three separate times between 2009 and 2015. The two pivotal trials - PROTECT-AF and PREVAIL - were the basis for approval.

What most patients don't know:

• PROTECT-AF initially showed 50% higher ischemic stroke rates in the device arm versus warfarin
• PREVAIL failed its first primary efficacy endpoint - specifically because of higher strokes in the Watchman group
• By the third FDA panel in 2014, updated data showed the stroke gap had gotten worse, not better
• The final risk/benefit vote was 6 to 5 with one abstention - one of the narrowest approvals in recent device history
• The FDA approved it four months later anyway

None of that is in your consent form.

And critically - both trials compared Watchman to warfarin, an older blood thinner most of us aren't even prescribed anymore. The device was approved having never been directly tested against the DOACs that would become the actual real-world alternative.

That comparison didn't happen for another decade.

Why trial funding matters: the two 2026 trials

In March 2026, two major randomized controlled trials were published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine - arguably the most credible medical journal in the world. They reached nearly opposite conclusions. Understanding why tells you everything about how evidence gets shaped.

CLOSURE-AF - funded independently, no device industry money:

• 912 high-risk AFib patients randomized to Watchman vs. best medical therapy (primarily DOACs)
• Watchman failed to achieve noninferiority - meaning it could not prove it was as good as the medication
• The device arm showed numerically higher major bleeding and cardiovascular death
• The lead investigator - previously a LAAC advocate - publicly stated he would change his practice

CHAMPION-AF - funded by Boston Scientific, manufacturer of Watchman:

• Met the noninferiority threshold on its composite endpoint
• Reported lower overall bleeding in the device arm - the commercial headline
• But buried in the data: ischemic stroke - the thing the device is specifically designed to prevent - was higher in the Watchman arm: 3.2% versus 2.0%
• The noninferiority margin critics describe as "generous" - statistically chosen to make the bar easier to clear
• Boston Scientific framed the results as a pathway to expand the eligible patient population from 5 million to 20 million people

Same journal.
Same month.

One independent, one manufacturer-funded.

One found it inferior.
One found it non-inferior.

Ask yourself: which result do you think you'd hear about in a consult room at a hospital that does these procedures?

The financial picture you deserve to understand

I've spent over a decade in healthcare. I know what the revenue architecture looks like. I want to be blunt about this because it matters:

A Watchman procedure generates substantial facility fees, cath lab utilization, echo imaging, and follow-up visits. A DOAC prescription generates a pharmacy copay.

Boston Scientific's stock dropped nearly 18% in a single session in late 2025 primarily on concerns about Watchman growth stalling. After CHAMPION-AF, management announced they were pursuing an FDA label expansion - which would unlock broader Medicare reimbursement and dramatically increase the billable population.

This is not a conspiracy. It's just a business.

But it's a business operating inside a healthcare system where you are the customer, and where the incentives don't always point toward the most conservative, evidence-based recommendation.

The real-world outcomes data

The clinical trials are one thing. Here's what actually happened to real patients:

A 2024 study of Medicare beneficiaries - published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes - found:

• 44% were dead within 5 years of Watchman implantation
• 15% had major bleeding events at 5 years
• 7% had ischemic stroke at 5 years

That 5-year mortality is roughly double what the pivotal trials showed. The difference? Real patients are sicker than trial participants. Trial enrollment is curated. Your cath lab is not.

Additionally, roughly 1 in 5 patients has a residual leak around the device after implantation - and leaks are associated with higher stroke rates, not lower. This is called peri-device leak, and it is a documented, peer-reviewed finding.

The procedural risks you should know before signing

From CLOSURE-AF - the independent trial:

• Cardiac tamponade: ~1.1%
• Major bleeding requiring transfusion: ~4%
• Procedure-related TIA: ~0.5%
• Procedure-related death: ~0.44%

These are not trivial numbers for a procedure whose long-term benefit over a daily pill remains, at best, contested.

Questions to ask before you consent

If you or someone you love is being offered a Watchman procedure, these are the questions that matter:

1. "Am I able to take long-term DOACs?" If yes - why is a procedure being recommended over medication?
2. "What does the CLOSURE-AF trial show, and why doesn't it change your recommendation?"
3. "What is my actual procedural complication risk based on your center's real-world volume data - not trial data?"
4. "What happens if the device leaks?"

A physician who is giving you an honest, patient-centered recommendation will welcome these questions.

Who Watchman may genuinely be appropriate for

I want to be fair. The procedure has a real, if narrow, evidence-based role:

• Patients with documented contraindications to long-term anticoagulation - prior life-threatening bleed, intracranial hemorrhage, serious DOAC intolerance
• Patients where the bleeding risk of anticoagulation genuinely outweighs the stroke prevention benefit

Not my opinions. Not a doctor. It is simply what the data reports.

For those patients, the conversation is different. The problem is the procedure is being offered far beyond that population - to patients who can tolerate DOACs - in a system with financial incentives that make "procedure" more attractive than "prescription."

Why I'm writing this

I have five ablations behind me. I've sat in consult rooms. I've read the trials. I've seen Watchman brochures all over the place. I've watched the debates happen in professional forums while patients sit in waiting rooms with no idea the debate exists.

The professionals arguing about this in the New England Journal of Medicine are largely talking to each other.

You deserve to be in that conversation before you sign a consent form.

Do your research. Stay informed.

Your heart is worth the extra 30 minutes.

Have any questions - happy to answer what I can.

If I had to guess? Litigation is coming. Some already has.

More is almost an absolute certainty.

Hey hey folks =)

I want to state this right off the bat for this post: this is not medical advice. I'm not your doctor. I'm not telling you whether to get this procedure or not.

What I am is someone who has spent a decade as a healthcare industry veteran, lived through 5 ablations - the last one a Farapulse pulsed-field procedure from Boston Scientific for ventricular tachycardia related to an ARVC diagnosis - and along the way developed the literacy to read clinical trials, understand how they're funded, and follow the professional debates that happen in cardiology circles that almost never reach patients.

This post is about closing that gap. Because the gap is costing people their lives.

What is Watchman?

If you have AFib and have been told you're a candidate for stroke prevention, you've probably been offered two paths: a daily blood thinner (DOAC - Eliquis, Xarelto, Pradaxa), or a procedure called Left Atrial Appendage Closure (LAAC), most commonly done with a device called the Watchman FLX, made by Boston Scientific.

The pitch: a one-time procedure seals off the small pouch in your heart where most AFib clots form. Eventually get off blood thinners for life. Sounds like a win.

Here's what the brochure leaves out.

The trial history is uncomfortable reading

The Watchman went through FDA review three separate times between 2009 and 2015. The two pivotal trials - PROTECT-AF and PREVAIL - were the basis for approval.

What most patients don't know:

• PROTECT-AF initially showed 50% higher ischemic stroke rates in the device arm versus warfarin
• PREVAIL failed its first primary efficacy endpoint - specifically because of higher strokes in the Watchman group
• By the third FDA panel in 2014, updated data showed the stroke gap had gotten worse, not better
• The final risk/benefit vote was 6 to 5 with one abstention - one of the narrowest approvals in recent device history
• The FDA approved it four months later anyway

None of that is in your consent form.

And critically - both trials compared Watchman to warfarin, an older blood thinner most of us aren't even prescribed anymore. The device was approved having never been directly tested against the DOACs that would become the actual real-world alternative.

That comparison didn't happen for another decade.

Why trial funding matters: the two 2026 trials

In March 2026, two major randomized controlled trials were published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine - arguably the most credible medical journal in the world. They reached nearly opposite conclusions. Understanding why tells you everything about how evidence gets shaped.

CLOSURE-AF - funded independently, no device industry money:

• 912 high-risk AFib patients randomized to Watchman vs. best medical therapy (primarily DOACs)
• Watchman failed to achieve noninferiority - meaning it could not prove it was as good as the medication
• The device arm showed numerically higher major bleeding and cardiovascular death
• The lead investigator - previously a LAAC advocate - publicly stated he would change his practice

CHAMPION-AF - funded by Boston Scientific, manufacturer of Watchman:

• Met the noninferiority threshold on its composite endpoint
• Reported lower overall bleeding in the device arm - the commercial headline
• But buried in the data: ischemic stroke - the thing the device is specifically designed to prevent - was higher in the Watchman arm: 3.2% versus 2.0%
• The noninferiority margin critics describe as "generous" - statistically chosen to make the bar easier to clear
• Boston Scientific framed the results as a pathway to expand the eligible patient population from 5 million to 20 million people

Same journal.
Same month.

One independent, one manufacturer-funded.

One found it inferior.
One found it non-inferior.

Ask yourself: which result do you think you'd hear about in a consult room at a hospital that does these procedures?

The financial picture you deserve to understand

I've spent over a decade in healthcare. I know what the revenue architecture looks like. I want to be blunt about this because it matters:

A Watchman procedure generates substantial facility fees, cath lab utilization, echo imaging, and follow-up visits. A DOAC prescription generates a pharmacy copay.

Boston Scientific's stock dropped nearly 18% in a single session in late 2025 primarily on concerns about Watchman growth stalling. After CHAMPION-AF, management announced they were pursuing an FDA label expansion - which would unlock broader Medicare reimbursement and dramatically increase the billable population.

This is not a conspiracy. It's just a business.

But it's a business operating inside a healthcare system where you are the customer, and where the incentives don't always point toward the most conservative, evidence-based recommendation.

The real-world outcomes data

The clinical trials are one thing. Here's what actually happened to real patients:

A 2024 study of Medicare beneficiaries - published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes - found:

• 44% were dead within 5 years of Watchman implantation
• 15% had major bleeding events at 5 years
• 7% had ischemic stroke at 5 years

That 5-year mortality is roughly double what the pivotal trials showed. The difference? Real patients are sicker than trial participants. Trial enrollment is curated. Your cath lab is not.

Additionally, roughly 1 in 5 patients has a residual leak around the device after implantation - and leaks are associated with higher stroke rates, not lower. This is called peri-device leak, and it is a documented, peer-reviewed finding.

The procedural risks you should know before signing

From CLOSURE-AF - the independent trial:

• Cardiac tamponade: ~1.1%
• Major bleeding requiring transfusion: ~4%
• Procedure-related TIA: ~0.5%
• Procedure-related death: ~0.44%

These are not trivial numbers for a procedure whose long-term benefit over a daily pill remains, at best, contested.

Questions to ask before you consent

If you or someone you love is being offered a Watchman procedure, these are the questions that matter:

1. "Am I able to take long-term DOACs?" If yes - why is a procedure being recommended over medication?
2. "What does the CLOSURE-AF trial show, and why doesn't it change your recommendation?"
3. "What is my actual procedural complication risk based on your center's real-world volume data - not trial data?"
4. "What happens if the device leaks?"

A physician who is giving you an honest, patient-centered recommendation will welcome these questions.

Who Watchman may genuinely be appropriate for

I want to be fair. The procedure has a real, if narrow, evidence-based role:

• Patients with documented contraindications to long-term anticoagulation - prior life-threatening bleed, intracranial hemorrhage, serious DOAC intolerance
• Patients where the bleeding risk of anticoagulation genuinely outweighs the stroke prevention benefit

Not my opinions. Not a doctor. It is simply what the data reports.

For those patients, the conversation is different. The problem is the procedure is being offered far beyond that population - to patients who can tolerate DOACs - in a system with financial incentives that make "procedure" more attractive than "prescription."

Why I'm writing this

I have five ablations behind me. I've sat in consult rooms. I've read the trials. I've seen Watchman brochures all over the place. I've watched the debates happen in professional forums while patients sit in waiting rooms with no idea the debate exists.

The professionals arguing about this in the New England Journal of Medicine are largely talking to each other.

You deserve to be in that conversation before you sign a consent form.

Do your research. Stay informed.

Your heart is worth the extra 30 minutes.

Have any questions - happy to answer what I can.

If I had to guess? Litigation is coming. Some already has.

More is almost an absolute certainty.

I want to write today about some of the work I've been doing and the why behind it.

I've been lurking in this subreddit virtually from the day I was first admitted for PVC bigeminy. December 2016. I didn't know then that I was stepping into a ten-year experience that would include millions of skippies, seven scheduled procedures, five that actually got performed, and an eighth already on the horizon for a new issue.

I say those things not to glamorize them. I say them so you know - I can relate to how many of you feel.

I am not a man who sits idle when I know I can help. And it does not sit well with me that so many of you are feeling the things I have felt, without anyone doing much about it.

What happened after my Farapulse ablation

What four prior thermal ablations had failed to resolve was completely eliminated. The probability of that was not high. I knew what I was walking in with. I did not know what I was walking out with.

What I didn't expect was everything else that changed.

Sleep. My sleep quality had been terrible for years. I snored hard. I woke exhausted. This resolved after the procedure. I sleep like I'm 20 again - and I am 40.

Tinnitus. Bad. Constant. A feeling of aural fullness that became background noise I had stopped noticing because I had stopped believing it was unusual. Gone after this procedure. Completely.

Vestibular dysfunction. I had periods of dizziness severe enough to make me hesitate before walking through a doorframe because I genuinely wasn't sure I'd clear it. I walked into a lot of door frames over the years. That resolved.

Brain fog. Years of it. A clouded mind. The inability to hold threads. I could still function in the moment - I was high-functioning professionally through all of this. But recall became a struggle. My wife at the time would say "you seriously cannot remember that?" - and I couldn't. She said it was sad. She was right. The problem wasn't that I was losing my mind. The problem was that half of my cognitive bandwidth was being consumed by a nervous system interpreting my own heartbeat as a threat signal. That resolved. I have the mind I had at 20 again.

What I started wondering

None of those things - sleep, hearing, balance, cognition - were on my cardiology chart. They were never screened for. Never connected. When I asked about the tinnitus, I was referred to an audiologist. When I mentioned the brain fog, I was told it was stress. When the vestibular stuff got bad, there was no connecting thread offered. I was just a man with a heart condition experiencing a list of unrelated inconveniences.

I started wondering how many of you have the same list.

And I started wondering whether anyone had ever measured it.

So I measured it.

Fortunate to have spent the last 15 years of my career working in multiple capacities within the healthcare industry. People know me to be scary analytical. They know me well!

When I couldn't find the analysis I was looking for, I built it.

Using seven years of nationally representative U.S. survey data (MEPS, 2017–2023), I looked at whether U.S. adults with arrhythmia codes show elevated rates of hearing loss, sleep disorders, vestibular conditions, cognitive symptoms, and psychiatric diagnoses - and whether they carry measurable excess healthcare expenditure.

The short version:

• Arrhythmia patients carry $9,547–$11,126 in adjusted annual excess expenditure per person versus matched controls
• Sleep disorders were the most robust claims-visible downstream signal
• Psychiatric distress in arrhythmia patients is massively under-coded: 88.3% of arrhythmia clinic patients screen positive for anxiety with a validated instrument; MEPS captures fewer than 10%
• The hearing, vestibular, and cognitive signals attenuate after adjustment - not because they aren't real, but because the data system can't see them. Claims data captures diagnosis codes, not lived distress.

That analysis is currently under review for publication. It's the first step.

What I'm building

I've started OneRhythm - a patient-led platform for education, community, and open research for people who live with arrhythmia and the families and caregivers who stand beside them.

And I'm building Project MIRmade - an open-source AI initiative to detect psychological distress in arrhythmia populations before it becomes a crisis. ECG signals, wearables, clinical language patterns. The same tools that already exist, applied to a population that is being systematically missed.

The mission is simple: move the numbers in the opposite direction.

88.3% anxiety prevalence. 71.1% depression prevalence.. Less than 5% of EP clinics routinely screen for any of it.

I was the 88.3%. I know you may be too.

I'm not okay with that being a permanent state of affairs.

The current state

I am a firm believer that cardiovascular care, and particularly arrhythmia, simply demands more federal and private investment. In order to steer this, the data needs to exist to support it. The good news is that much of it already does. More doesn't hurt.

- I have taken all of my records and translated them into a case report. The intent is to be able to identify cross-domain healthcare expenditures over my 10 year journey
- The case report is not hypothesis-confirming. It is hypothesis-generating. Big difference.
- The MEPS analysis is also being prepared for publishing.

This work is bootstrapped. I am currently aligning institutional collaborators and compute time for model training.

Help that is needed

I will be forming a patient advisory council for OneRhythm soon. I am also a firm believer that peer-support solutions for patients should be designed by patients - and I am only one of them.

Beyond that - just keep supporting one another. As many of us know, dealing with arrhythmia is not fun. It is isolating.

Often, the best therapy for me was knowing that I wasn't alone in how I was feeling. Every time that I came to this subreddit - I knew I was not.

More funding is needed to support communities just like this one.

That isn't just my own opinion. It is what the data says is needed.

Folks have probably seen my posts around. Wanted to say thank you.

I have pretty much dedicated my life to figuring this arrhythmia thing out, for me and for as many as I can.

Laying in the bed in the ER at the moment. No, the constant arrhythmia has not come back, thank God. But, as it goes with my condition, a new issue has come up and it has started the conversation about the next ablation.

Doesn't really matter, but this would be my 8th attempt.

I mean to tell you - in every way, shape, and form, this disease has taken everything from me that it could.

That said - it has also given me things that I would have never had before.

In writing about my experience with arrhythmia, these are some of the responses I received.

----

A man sent my writing to his wife so they could finally talk about what he has been going through. A conversation that might not have happened for years happened because a stranger's words built the bridge his own pain would not let him build.

A woman with an ablation scheduled next month said my post gave her strength. She was sitting there feeling her irregular heart when she found my words.

A man sobbing at his desk at work said the words could have come from his own mouth.

A woman who was freshly postpartum, already dealing with PVCs and PACs, said she does not trust her own body — and that what I wrote was inspiring.

A 29-year-old man has been through multiple Holter monitors, an echo, a stress test, a 30-day monitor, a CT calcium score, anxiety meds, beta blockers - everything checks out, and yet his rhythm still goes haywire when he exerts himself. He has been to the ER twelve times in eight months. He said he is lost. He thanked me for my story.

A man with 37 years of arrhythmia said he was at the point of giving up before finding a doctor who finally believed it was not "just arrhythmia."

A man newly diagnosed with ACM - three ablations already, told his case is too complex for surgery - said seeing a similar story was helpful. His chest bubbles like soup in the microwave at night. He was told it was psychological.

A man one week into his diagnosis was fighting off tears reading my post. He said he keeps wanting to crawl into a pit of despair. He is seriously considering talking to a mental health professional - partly because of what I wrote.

A 71-year-old man two months into his diagnosis said that a quarter of the way into my post, his internal voice was telling me to trust myself and find a better doctor. He is going in for his first cardioversion next week.

A woman who has had AFib for ten years went into heart failure six years ago. She was sleeping 15 hours a day, dizzy, out of breath walking to the kitchen. She had to convince her doctor to try something. She just had her first cardioversion two weeks ago.

A man with NSVT is waiting for Farapulse to be approved in his state. Reading that it worked for me stopped him in his tracks. He called it a sign.

A man said it is virtually impossible to have a nice conversation in the kitchen while the house is on fire.

A man said he has been humbled by how many times he thought he could show up for family or friends, only to feel like an enfeebled old man. People probably look at him as lazy since his body is fit. He just sits at home and hopes for better days.

A woman who found a therapist specializing in cardiac patient mental health said she has been dealing with AFib for 31 years - five ablations and a surgical Maze procedure. She said thank you for gathering and validating "us Skippies" in a truthful and hopeful place.

A man said he can totally relate to the substance abuse and the internal battle.

Someone said they wish they had read it at home instead of work, because they were sobbing. They said some of the things I wrote were so painfully relatable it could have come from their own mouth.

A woman said she is saving my post to help her when she is struggling.

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I have done a great deal of work in my life. Have had a successful career in healthcare/device sales.

Nothing I have done has been as rewarding as connecting with other folks going through it with arrhythmia and being able to have a positive impact in their day.

I've been there.

Hell I am in the ER right now. But you know what? I'm certainly not alone.