Catching up with April

Blog Update

Zio's MV e-gravel bike

April? Who is April? Is she related to Art?, Nah, but how long has it been since this blog's been updated? That's too long!

March was hell. Heather went to Greece to do some academic projects after our 35th wedding anniversary celebration in Rome while Zio Lorenzo went back home and enjoyed riding his bike...until he didn't.

Why? Turns out he was having some sort of A-FIB issues. By the time Heather came back he could barely make it up the stairs! WTF? We turned on Zio's fitness tracker's warning feature and sure enough, it showed A-FIB. Yikes! Kind of explains a few things, like back when he first bought the MV bike he couldn't get out of his own way a time or two, but a few days of rest seemed to fix it. Same problem?

Not this time! An appointment was made with a private cardio doc and some tests run. Doc wanted more tests so we had those done too. All this privately at amazingly low cost compared to the USA's so-called healthcare system. A short-term monitoring gizmo was installed as well. Results made doc want more tests so we did those too.

Some meds were prescribed a long with follow-up visit, but Zio again was so tired he could barely make it up the stairs OR do a short bike ride down to fill the drinking water bottles. WTF? Doc says come to ER now so we called a taxi rather than a noisy ambulance.

ER docs take a look and say "CODE RED!" Yikes! Needles and tubes follow along with EKG, etc. before he's admitted to the hospital's cardio ward. Next day they decide to shock him, sort of a "CTRL-ALT-DEL" thing where they sort-of turn you off, then back on again, hoping the restart will put things back in order. Not fun and they weren't satisfied it worked.

So it's ablation time! If you've read The Haywire Heart you know the drill: They shove a sort-of medical soldering iron up into your heart through an artery in your leg and burn the short-circuits there that cause the A-FIB, all while you lay there on the table. Not fun.

After two hours of torture they say they've found and fixed things. Zio's outta the hospital the next day, noting the cost of having this done in the USA system is $25-$100K. Yikes!

Now that it's April finally he's been back on the shopping bike and yesterday on the sporty bike (the one in the photo) for a hour of low-effort fun. Woo and hoo!

This weekend's Paris-Roubaix so a bit of his own riding and watching others in the Hell of the North do their own.