Atrial fibrillation aka "whacky heart beat"

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I was feeling exhausted, and was actually requiring day time naps. Not just wanting a nap - by midday I was feeling so exhausted that I HAD to sleep (yesterday for 3 hours!). As well as that, my heart beat was super strong to the point that my pillow was shaking when I was trying to sleep, and it felt like my heart was about to beat out of my chest. It was worse after even just slight exertion (walks and stairs in particular), and worse toward the end of the day. And to add to it, something in my chest is twitching up near my collar bone, but it's as strong as the heartbeat, happens right across my chest and neck and twitches at a different rate to my heart obviously.

It felt like my heartbeat was going completely psycho, but then I figured out the heartbeat and twitching were separate. So I used my blood pressure monitor to watch my heartbeat, as it beeps with each heart beat. Sure enough, it did a double beat. I put my fingers on the pulse in my neck so see if I could pick it up, or if it was the machine being weird. It did another double beat, which I felt this time. Later in the evening, I'd just gotten up to brush my teeth and get ready for bed when I got really light headed, my chest started going nuts, and I was puffing from walking the 10 or so steps. So I checked it again, and it did a couple more double beats.

So Tuesday I went in to see the cardiologist who did an EKG, a quick echo, and checked my heart lungs with the stethoscope. There was no signs of anything wrong - no leaking, no odd sounds, and lungs were clear, so it's just atrial fibrillation. Apparently it's quite common after heart surgery, your heart is still sorting itself out after the trauma, and just needs some extra time. It feels weird, and a little scary, but it's nothing to worry about - the don't even do anything for it. I was still taking the diuretics for fluid retention, and the potassium tablets to replace the potassium lost thanks to the diuretics. The cardiologist thought lack of potassium could be contributing, so told me to stop taking the diuretics, and eat lots of foods high in potassium - bananas, tomatoes and oranges. He also said that I was having a perfect recovery and nobody is allowed a perfect recovery :-)