Peace of mind in your pocket.

Here’s how I learned the value of the Kardia heart monitor for AFIB.

I was sitting on the couch, watching TV, relaxing and enjoying the evening before my 60th birthday. And then, suddenly, I blacked out.

Let’s see… sitting on the couch is not strenuous. A glass of wine with dinner is not cause for blacking out. The biggest stress I felt was over turning 60 and that wasn’t too bad. I couldn’t find any reason for passing out on the couch.

I’d had several similar incidents over the past few weeks, but nothing quite as intense as blacking out. I’d promised my alternative care physician that I’d go to the hospital if anything like this happened again.

After a few hours in the ER, I spent the rest of the night in intensive care. Three intensive care nurses showed up to sing Happy Birthday to me just after midnight. It took several weeks and a fortunate accident in my cardiologists office for me to receive a diagnosis of AFIB.

This is what AFIB looks like

After trying several prescription drugs I finally found something that didn’t have too many side-effects. It seemed to work as I didn’t have any more blackouts even though my EKG’s still looked a bit wonky every now and then.

Several years later, over lunch with Susan in a restaurant I blacked out again. The ER cardiologist convinced me that the medication was no longer effective.

My alternatives were: 1) start taking a much more powerful medication or 2) have an ablation procedure where they go into your heart and nuke the nerves around the openings to stop the AFIB. I choose ablation and was fortunate enough to work with an amazing cardiologist who used a cold ablation technique.

The procedure was a total success. After several months of perfect EKG’s I had a loop recorder implanted above my heart. After a couple of years of monitoring, I asked my cardiologist about replacing the battery of the loop recorder. He suggested take a look at Kardia.

Kardia heart monitor for AFIB

They have two versions and I choose the newer KardiaMobile 6L as it captures six views of my heart patterns. The FDA cleared the Kardia heart monitor for personal use. It’s very small and connects with your phone using Blue-tooth.

It takes about a minute to check my AFIB with the Kardia. It knows my heart rhythms and what’s normal for me. If an AFIB rhythm shows up it would tell me instantly. So far, I’ve had nothing but perfect charts so I can’t vouch for how that works. But a friend of ours knows it’s life-saving.

Susan told a co-worker about Kardia after he mentioned his concern for his mother who has AFIB. A couple of weeks later he told Susan it saved his mother’s life by catching her AFIB event early enough for her to get to the ER before anything serious happened. Then he bought one for an aunt who also has AFIB.

I highly recommend you talk with your doctor, read the information on their site. If you have AFIB or other heart issues, the Kardia monitor truly is peace of mind in your pocket.

PS – check out this page for other things we think are close to perfect.