My sister has been having problems with heart arrythmia for some years now. She’s had a pacemaker and defibrillator installed about 5 years back, and unfortunately the defib has had to fire several times since. Oh, and since I’m sure it will come up: she’s mid-50’s, history of heart issues since her 30’s, not overweight, no high blood pressure, no health issues I’m aware of other than the heart problem (isn’t that enough?)
She called me from the hospital in Buffalo yesterday quite upset about a number of things, most of which are irrelevant to this post. However, she did say medication was no longer controlling the arrythmia, the side-effects were getting intolerable for her, the procedure a couple months ago when they tried to locate and cauterize the faulty bit of heart tissue causing the problems didn’t work, and they’re transferring her to the Cleveland Clinic because, I presume, her docs are running out of ideas. (Yes, she does have good health insurance, yay for that.)
Obviously, the situation is very serious. I’m not going to flinch from that. I’m all too aware that if it weren’t for modern medicine we would have lost her some time ago and that, with this condition, sudden death, or relatively quick death, is always a possibility.
What I’m curious about is what, if anything, can be done from this point? Other than medication, what is there? Googling isn’t terribly helpful, as I just don’t have the energy to spare to sort through the info-dump that results. While sympathy and best wishes are always appreciated I’m hoping some of our medical Dopers can help me out here, either with info or pointing me to reliable sources on the internet as opposed, well, the rest of the internet.
As I’m on my way to Buffalo today and will be there at least through the end of the week (taking care of things there so Sister doesn’t have those particular worries, it’s something I can do to help her) I may not be able to reply to this thread for some time even though I should be able to read it. So thank you in advance for anything you can give me.