My Afib and urination odyssey

I've been part of this forum since near the beginning and a lot has happened since then. I thought it would be useful to tell my story. Maybe it could help somebody or at least offer hope.

I started experiencing frequent urination at night, and sometimes during the day, near 2000. Typically, at first, I would wake up after midnight and visit the bathroom 6-8 times, every 20-30 minutes. This started at about once a month or so. I had what would later be diagnosed as a-fib, but I didn't connect the two at first. After much complaining to my primary doctor, he sent me to Urology, where it was assumed I was just another aging male with an enlarged prostate. When I assured him that, while that was true, it wasn't the real problem, he gave me a plastic urinal and told me to record overnight volume for a week. I gave him daily numbers like: 2,700, 350, 1,900, 2,300, 500, 300, 3,000 ml. He considered the results and told me that he had heard about a-fib releasing a factor that caused the kidneys to dump liquid. He didn't know what to do about it and Endocrinology refused a referral.

About that time, my a-fib was documented. As my a-fib got worse, so did the urination. At the peak, I was going to the bathroom 15-18 times a night, every other night, and once measured 4.5 liters over night (I usually didn't measure, however). This, of course, led to severe dehydration. Over six months I had emergency room visits for bleeding kidneys (2), strokes (2), and an injury from fainting. My cardiologist agreed that something had to be done about the a-fib. RF ablation was the only outright cure, but in 2007, it was risky and the success rate was low. We agreed to try chemical control, hoping to buy time until the technology progressed. I was put on propafenone (Rhythmol), which worked phenomenally well for ten years: almost no arrhythmias or hyper-urination. Then, as expected, I started experiencing wildly fluctuating heart rhythm and I was taken off of it and put on amiodarone.

I was sent for an ablation consult and learned that it had, in fact, improved, and two ablation procedures were now routine at Kaiser Permanente, where I get medical care. They first performed a cryoablation, which is relatively quick and 80% effective. It didn't work for me, though. Six months later, they tried RF ablation, much more tedious (for them) and with about the same success rate. This one stuck. It took almost 6 months for things to settle down, but now I pee about as much as a 67 year old man does. Strangely, I still have arrhythmias, primarily ventricular, which must have snook up while the a-fib was firing, but my cardiologist doesn't seem worried about them. I've been told that the success rate of the procedure after 10 years is only about 20%, but drugs become effective again. Who knows. Maybe there will be a whole new treatment by then.

Good luck to all you hyper-urination a-fib victims out there. Maybe my blessings won't last, but it's great for now.

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