which had her in the hospital most of Thanksgiving Day.
Practically everybody has the occasional transient episode, but what happened to my sister went on for nearly twenty-four hours, until her heart finally converted to a normal rhythm.
After she got out of hospital, she showed me print-outs of the EKGs, one taken when she was in a-fib, the other after it had converted. It was a wonderful visual representation.
The up side of this happening on Thanksgiving was that I got to cook the dinner, which she'd planned to do -- I love fixing the traditional turkey and all, so it wasn't a chore. Plus, I wound up going to the hospital about three times that day, including bringing her home (she called to tell me she was released literally 30 seconds after I pulled the turkey out of the oven) and it was no bother as there was NO traffic on the roads. I told her she had exquisite timing.
But back to some of the underlying parts of your question: A-fib can be quite serious. In my sister's case, she had a very serious heart attack at age 43 -- she's now 68 -- and over the years has had various procedures, including stents and bypass surgery about three years ago. It doesn't help that she started smoking at age 13, and continues to do so, although perhaps 5-8 cigarettes a day. For what it's worth, heart disease runs rampant in our family, on both sides, although the older generation all smoked, and the younger, non-smoking generation does not have heart disease. How odd is that?
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