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By Jen Olson | on April 01, 2022

Guess what I did last weekend! I got my heart fixed at Mayo Clinic!

For the past eight years I’ve had intermittent episodes of atrial fibrillation, or afib, when the electrical system that controls the heart short circuits and causes the top two chambers — the atria — to beat wildly out of control.

As the cardiologists explained to me, afib won’t kill you, but the strokes they often cause will. When you’re in afib blood may pool in the heart and form clots, which can flow into the brain and put your lights out.

For the first two years we tried to control the afib with drugs, but when they didn’t work, Mayo did a cardioversion in 2016 to stop them. That’s a hospital version of the emergency defibrillation that you see on TV — your heart is shocked back into rhythm while you are under anesthesia. You go to sleep feeling like hell and wake up feeling like a million bucks.

That worked well for more than five years until just before last Christmas, when I started to feel a flutter in my chest. My home blood pressure monitor indicated I had an irregular heartbeat. I knew the afib was back.

This CT scan is a 3D view of John Cullen’s heart.

While earlier episodes of afib had put me out of commission until I could make it to the hospital ER for an IV, this time I felt no ill effects, like passing out.

I headed back to Rochester on Jan. 18 and the cardiologists confirmed my kitchen table diagnosis. They decided that this time they’d give me an ablation.

That’s a procedure where surgeons run an electric probe up through openings in the groin, navigating blood vessels into the inside of your heart. This probe, which has a camera on the tip, burns scars on the inside of your heart to prevent electrical impulses from going where they shouldn’t. That’s supposed to stop the afib.

I was never apprehensive about the surgery until I was laying in the operating room, at 8:30 a.m. Monday, looking up at a giant TV screen that in a few moments would show the inner workings of my beating heart. I wondered if it was too late to hop off the table and run down the hall, my open-backed gown flapping in the wind, when the anesthesiologists said they were ready to put me to sleep. I figured I’d gone this far, there’s no turning back now.

It’s certainly a reality check when you wonder if you’ll ever wake up again.

The Times’s John Cullen wasn’t much worse for wear, just a little groggy, Monday after having a heart ablation at Mayo Clinic in Rochester to make regular an irregular heart beat.

It’s same day surgery in most cases. My procedure took six hours in the operating room, followed by another six hours in recovery. After that, doctors sent me out of the hospital, but asked that I spend a day or two in Rochester in case problems developed.

Two surgeons worked on me with a team of nurses and anesthesiologists, led by Dr. Thomas Munger. He stopped by my recovery room to tell me everything went well, shook my hand and thanked me for choosing Mayo. The entire staff was wonderful.

After taking it easy for a few days, I can resume nearly all of my normal activities, except no lifting more than five pounds or exercise for 10 days.

Afib is fairly common, especially in people over age 60. It can be caused by a bunch of factors, like high blood pressure, lack of exercise, sleep apnea, overweight, genetics, etc.

You’d be surprised how many people have afib. When I first got it I thought I was unique until I found out about so many other folks around Storm Lake who had it too.

THE MAYO experience is amazing. I sat in waiting rooms up there feeling sorry for myself until I heard some of the stories from other patients who come there from around the world for treatment. My problem suddenly seemed inconsequential. We are lucky to have the best medical center in the world just three and a half hours away.

We have good doctors and a good hospital right here in Storm Lake, but cardiac surgery is not available here. You have to go to Sioux City, or Omaha or Iowa City. Or Rochester, where it is routine.

Siebens Building, named for Storm Lake native Harold Siebens, is part of Mayo Clinic.

Storm Lake native and Buena Vista University benefactor Harold Walter Siebens was also generous to Mayo Clinic. There’s a 14-story building named for him on the Mayo campus in downtown Rochester. Busts of Siebens and his wife, with mention of his Storm Lake background, are featured in a little shrine in the lobby.

But enough talk about Siebens. Let’s get back to me.

Prior to my ablation, I underwent two days of exams, providing proof that I do indeed have a heart. A CT scan produced a 3D rendering of my ticker, which is pictured in this column. Unbelievable that this technology is available!

And there’s more unbelievable stuff coming, like proton beams that will allow surgeons to perform ablations without even entering the heart.

I wonder what the future of medicine holds. It’s pretty amazing right now. Thanks to all the doctors, nurses, technicians and others who make our lives better.

The Storm Lake Times 220 W Railroad St PO Box 487 Storm Lake, IA 50588 712.732.4991 | 1.800.732.4992

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