anyone else been diagnosed with this problem looks like i will be loosing my hgv entitlement. what treatment did you have etc
I don’t have AF but have another heart rhythm issue called supraventricular tachycardia (heart races out of control sometimes), including lots of ectopic beats (feeling as though it’s missed a beat, although it’s actually gained one too quickly). I told every doctor and cardiologist I’ve seen that I’m a HGV driver and they all told me to keep quiet about it as it’s not likely to affect driving. I’d get some advice on this from a cardiologist before condemning your licence to the scrapbook of history, as it seems to depend on how well the condition can be controlled. In my case, medication doesn’t do a lot and I seem to manage to deal with it when I have an ‘attack’. It’s distracting, but not to the point that it affects my driving.
I take it you’ve had the 24 hour holter monitor which picked up the AF? You’ll likely be prescribed a beta blocker of some kind (propranolol and bisoprolol seem to be favourites; I’m on the latter). These seem to produce mixed results in different people, with some people reacting well and others, like me, not feeling much benefit, but they’ll certainly do you no harm. You may be prescribed a blood thinner like warfarin if you have AF. Try to avoid this medicine if you can as it’s the same stuff used in rat poison, albeit at a much lower concentration. It’s only used because AF ‘can’ increase the risk of clotting in the arteries surrounding the heart, and thinning the blood reduces this risk.
I know how soul destroying it is being told you have something going funny with your ticker, and when it does start playing up, it’s the most alarming thing in the world; you’ll feel faint, dizzy, disconnected with the world and probably start to panic (which increases the heart rate even more!), but you do get used to it. It takes a long time (in my case, years), but your mind WILL adapt to living with it. The worst part is right now, the acceptance phase, trust me. The most important thing to remember, is when you’re having a bad day, you WILL have a good day to make up for it, it does seem to even out like swings and roundabouts, for me anyway.
Stay away from stimulants as best as you can; things like chocolate, caffeine, nicotine, sugar… All the good things basically! Up your water intake and make sure you get your five a day. MAGNESIUM TAURATE. I put it in caps because I spent a year, suffering, before I came across this. It’s something you’ll rarely hear from a doctor who’s interested only in prescription medicines, but there are too many stories online of people who’ve had success with this for it to be only coincidence. Magnesium is absolutely vital for your heart and most people lack enough of it. Magnesium isn’t absorbed easily in tablet form on its own, which is why I’ll say it again, MAGNESIUM TAURATE. When combined with taurine (something else that your heart needs!), it’s absorbed much more readily. The brand I use is manufactured by a company called Cardiovascular Research Ltd. If you google MAGNESIUM TAURATE, you’ll find it. Can’t stress getting your hands on this enough.
Exercise works wonders for my heart rhythm, BUT TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE STARTING ANY NEW/RIGOROUS EXERCISE. I know what AF is, but I don’t know if exercise will help or hinder it, so get the green light first! You don’t need to go out running… Walk to the shops/cycle to work instead of driving if it’s not too far. Just take it steady if you want to; raising your heart rate to anything above resting is only a good thing.
If you want ANY advice, any pointers in the right direction, or even if you’re feeling crap and need a chat, drop me a PM. Heart rhythm issues are a pain in the arse to live with sometimes, but there are hundreds of thousands of people waking up every day and dealing with this (it’s more common than you’d believe), so you’re definitely not alone. Remember to talk to a cardiologist for advice on the HGV entitlement; if you’ve already told the DVLA, it’s not a bad thing… You hear a lot of people moan about them, but I gather they’re pretty fair when it comes to medical conditions these days, and appear to prefer a common sense approach to blanket bans. Play it by ear.
Stay confident mate, and embrace life off beat 
I know a bloke here in Oz that had the fibrillation problem; whether it was the same as you have I’m not sure, but he had day surgery which by his description involved a few cuts: keyhole surgery I suppose. I’m putting a link in, and if you follow it, go to the right of the page where you’ll see a box with a two tone blue header. There’s some interesting reading there particularly about treatments.
Hope this helps and all the best of luck with it.
If you are asymptomatic ie not passing out etc you will be fine my friend was cardioverted with the paddles he’s been fine since hasn’t reverted back into af and kept his license no probs there is hundreds of thousands of people suffering this condition undiagnosed , keep your chin up pal you will be fine.
Hi,
I had a heart infection causing myocarditis and severe left ventricular systolic dysfunction and other problems and then was a Guinea pig for stem cell injections , had two heart biopsies operations whilst kept awake , one to take samples and one to inject modified cells back in. Because originally I was at 15% left ventricular EF refraction (only 15% output on left side) I was told I was a candidate for a heart transfer and survival was not a definite outcome !
Now I am back to exactly where I should be for a man of my age and perfectly healthy and my consultant who is the world expert says I am fixed for good, This is amazing as I am the only one to have done so well out of over 3000 patients.
However a jumped up ex GP who works for DVLA says because it was "new technology " used he will not let me drive for 5 years from the operations date…So it’s mid 2017 before I get to drive a truck again if he decides then not to extend the date . So beware as the consultants may not have the last word !..Also if something does happen (God forbid ) you will get hung out to dry if you do not inform them of the condition as the onus is on you to do so. They may say they want you to do an extended medical or just decide you can just drive or if you get the ■■■■■■■ I did it’s time to hang up the keys for a while.
That may not be what you want to hear but I would tell them…
3 wheeler,
Just want to say you have my utmost admiration for what you’ve been through, well done mate and what a relief for you. I don’t know about you, but one positive outcome of all this is it’s made me appreciate life in a way I don’t think many people do, until they face something like this.
You’ve touched on a particular sensitive point for me… GPs 
I’m sure there are good ones out there, but unfortunately my experience with them has, on the whole, been very illuminating; unless you have a cough or the runs, they don’t seem to have much experience in knowing how to deal with problems, and when they hit a brick wall, they try to become over academic on the whole subject and end up prescribing you something totally useless. I’ve never met so many people in the same profession who can’t say the words “I don’t know.”
Something else to think about if you don’t get very far with the NHS… I paid £100 for a private consultation with a cardiologist who specialises in heart rhythm disorders, and I was amazed at the difference in the care and interest he provided me compared to an NHS cardio. I don’t know if they all do it this way, but for that £100, this PRIVATE doctor, who could see I wasn’t made of money, ended up providing me with £3,000 worth of treatment and billed it all to the NHS. I had to wait months, whereas somebody on a plan or similar would have had it done in days/weeks, but I wouldn’t have got near it if I’d accepted the word of NHS docs. So, for me, the £100 was just a ‘gatepass’ to get to see somebody who was in a position to make sure something got done.
Javiatrix,
My other half is a consultant…in Spinal.
If it was not for her I would be dead . I first saw a useless GP who was reported to the General medical council for incompetence (she left the country before the hearing strangely ).
My current GP is fantastic but sadly greatly overworked just like most of the NHS and it’s system. When I caught the cough that started my problem I went from fit and healthy to not being able to climb one flight of stairs to bed in less than 3 weeks , if my other half had not known the known the junior A@E doctor and “pushed” him for what she wanted …an MRI then and there It’s most likely I would now be in a wooden box. As soon as they realised how bad I actually was I will say the NHS worked very very hard for me. But having a consultant missus certainly helped me to get to see the experts who got me back to where I am now ! The fight to save the NHS has to go on, but getting rid of levels of “management” has to happen first.
Anyway …it’s only about 92 weeks till I get my licence back 
I had af in the uk they took my licence of me for 2 years until i had my ablation opp to sort it out and then i had to pester them everyweek until it came through
If you get chance of ablation go for it i was blastered 3 times to try and kick my rythem back in and it didnt happen ablation worked first time
Javiatrix:
I don’t have AF but have another heart rhythm issue called supraventricular tachycardia (heart races out of control sometimes), including lots of ectopic beats (feeling as though it’s missed a beat, although it’s actually gained one too quickly). I told every doctor and cardiologist I’ve seen that I’m a HGV driver and they all told me to keep quiet about it as it’s not likely to affect driving. I’d get some advice on this from a cardiologist before condemning your licence to the scrapbook of history, as it seems to depend on how well the condition can be controlled. In my case, medication doesn’t do a lot and I seem to manage to deal with it when I have an ‘attack’. It’s distracting, but not to the point that it affects my driving.I take it you’ve had the 24 hour holter monitor which picked up the AF? You’ll likely be prescribed a beta blocker of some kind (propranolol and bisoprolol seem to be favourites; I’m on the latter). These seem to produce mixed results in different people, with some people reacting well and others, like me, not feeling much benefit, but they’ll certainly do you no harm. You may be prescribed a blood thinner like warfarin if you have AF. Try to avoid this medicine if you can as it’s the same stuff used in rat poison, albeit at a much lower concentration. It’s only used because AF ‘can’ increase the risk of clotting in the arteries surrounding the heart, and thinning the blood reduces this risk.
I know how soul destroying it is being told you have something going funny with your ticker, and when it does start playing up, it’s the most alarming thing in the world; you’ll feel faint, dizzy, disconnected with the world and probably start to panic (which increases the heart rate even more!), but you do get used to it. It takes a long time (in my case, years), but your mind WILL adapt to living with it. The worst part is right now, the acceptance phase, trust me. The most important thing to remember, is when you’re having a bad day, you WILL have a good day to make up for it, it does seem to even out like swings and roundabouts, for me anyway.
Stay away from stimulants as best as you can; things like chocolate, caffeine, nicotine, sugar… All the good things basically! Up your water intake and make sure you get your five a day. MAGNESIUM TAURATE. I put it in caps because I spent a year, suffering, before I came across this. It’s something you’ll rarely hear from a doctor who’s interested only in prescription medicines, but there are too many stories online of people who’ve had success with this for it to be only coincidence. Magnesium is absolutely vital for your heart and most people lack enough of it. Magnesium isn’t absorbed easily in tablet form on its own, which is why I’ll say it again, MAGNESIUM TAURATE. When combined with taurine (something else that your heart needs!), it’s absorbed much more readily. The brand I use is manufactured by a company called Cardiovascular Research Ltd. If you google MAGNESIUM TAURATE, you’ll find it. Can’t stress getting your hands on this enough.
Exercise works wonders for my heart rhythm, BUT TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE STARTING ANY NEW/RIGOROUS EXERCISE. I know what AF is, but I don’t know if exercise will help or hinder it, so get the green light first! You don’t need to go out running… Walk to the shops/cycle to work instead of driving if it’s not too far. Just take it steady if you want to; raising your heart rate to anything above resting is only a good thing.
If you want ANY advice, any pointers in the right direction, or even if you’re feeling crap and need a chat, drop me a PM. Heart rhythm issues are a pain in the arse to live with sometimes, but there are hundreds of thousands of people waking up every day and dealing with this (it’s more common than you’d believe), so you’re definitely not alone. Remember to talk to a cardiologist for advice on the HGV entitlement; if you’ve already told the DVLA, it’s not a bad thing… You hear a lot of people moan about them, but I gather they’re pretty fair when it comes to medical conditions these days, and appear to prefer a common sense approach to blanket bans. Play it by ear.
Stay confident mate, and embrace life off beat
Lots of common sense advice there mate. I had the same problem as you, used to end up in casualty where they would inject drugs in to me to get the heart to stop racing, usually about 170 beats a minute, sometime kept in overnight. Mine would normally kick off if I put a sharp load on my heart, say from sitting down to suddenly lifting something, I did try and get into the habit of slowing down, working up to doing things but sometimes I forgot, and sometimes I think it was just going to kick off no matter what I do, and I did smoke back then and that definitely did not help.
I had an operation called an abalation, just a wire inserted thru the groin in to the heart and apparently they “burn” a nerve, the burning was a bit painful but nowt to shout about. Supposed to be a very safe procedure, just a day operation but me being a drama queen it went wrong and ended up in hospital for 2 weeks.
That was about 12 years ago (Tony Blair had the same operation about the same time) and my heart never races now. It sill miss a beat now and then and every now and then it will try and trip out and start racing but it never gets going.
Would have thought your own Doctor might have suggested the operation to you, for 99.99% of people who had it done it was just a day missing out of there life.
Be lucky.
I’ve had AF for nearly 3 years and my cardiologist said there was no need to report it. I do have my 5 year medical in Jan but as I drive so infrequently it’s no big deal to lose my entitlement.
Now my AF leads to a heart rate from 50 to 150, but I don’t any real feeling of palpitations, or racing heart. I’m on beta blockers which keep it at around the 70’s – you will need an electronic device to measure you heart as taking your pulse manually just doesn’t work.
The only real problem it gives me is sometimes I feel really knackered for a few minutes, then I’m up and running again.
Warfarin is essential due to the high risk of having a stroke, but I have been on one of the new substitutes – Rivaroxaban, which you just take and don’t need regular blood tests to check your INR for. Much better that Warfarin without, for me, any side effects.
Go to a gym, not for the exercise but rig yourself up to a heart monitor on the machines and watch it hit 200 beats, scares the living daylights out of the staff 
Apart from the odd occasion when you can feel a little light headed if you stand up too quick it’s not really stopped me doing anything
I have in the last year been walking quite a lot, I usually get a 2 mile walk in every day and have a Fitbit to keep me honest. I have also almost completely stopped drinking, Warfarin makes you drunk very easily and I just got out of the habit to the point now I’m a bit like a reformed smoker! Soon be able to join the Salvation Army
I would say I feel better since I found out I have AF and been on medication for it than before, so it’s not all bad.