Atrial brillation treatment puts an end to frustration
WHEN THEN23-YEAR-OLD
Kenneth “Bob” Flaa returned
from active duty in the Michigan
National Guard in 1959, he was
forced to stay in the hospital for an
extra week with a heart murmur
before he could be discharged—at
least that’s what he was told.
He didn’t know it at the time,
but he was misdiagnosed, and the
hospitalization proved to be just a
preview of what was to come many
years later. After being discharged
from the service, Flaa and his
wife, Lu, moved from the Upper
Peninsula to Kenosha, Wis., where
he worked for 32 years.
It wasn’t until he was
in his early 50s that
Flaa’s heart began
to act up again.
“When they
first discovered my murmur during
my discharge test, I didn’t even
feel it, and it never bothered me
all those years I worked, either,”
says Flaa, now 77 years old. “It
wasn’t until I retired that I began
to notice that my heart would go
out of rhythm when I reached for
something, but it never stayed that
way for very long.”
It Gets Worse
Not long after his retirement in
1991, the Flaas moved back to the
Upper Peninsula, where the couple
of 53 years still resides. Shortly
thereafter, Flaa’s heart fell out
of rhythm again, but this time it
failed to correct itself, prompting a
trip to the emergency room.
At the hospital,
doctors performed
a cardioversion, a
procedure that uses
electricity to shock
the heart back
into rhythm.
Flaa learned
that his
heart was
beating
180 times
per minute
before being put back into rhythm.
He also learned that the heart
murmur diagnosis he received
34 years prior was wrong, and
instead he had atrial fibrillation,
sometimes called a-fib, which is
a common heart condition where
a faulty electrical impulse causes
the heart to beat irregularly and
greatly increases a person’s risk for
stroke.
After leaving the emergency
room with his heart back in
rhythm and an accurate diagnosis,
Flaa began a medication regimen
in an attempt to control his a-fib.
Starting in 1995, the Flaas began
logging countless miles as they
made hourslong trips from one
doctor appointment to the next
in Michigan, Minnesota and
Wisconsin.
“Every six months we’d have
to go to the doctor for a follow-up
appointment and every time the
medications didn’t work, they put
me on a different one,” Flaa says. “I
tried different doctors and pretty
much every available drug.”
This pattern continued for
17 years until 2012, when the
Flaas saw an advertisement in the
newspaper for a free a-fib seminar
offered by Aspirus at Gogebic
Community College. At this point
Kenneth
“Bob” and
Lu Flaa are
relieved to
have gotten
the answers
they needed.
Back in
Sync
4
Pathways •
