I woke up in the morning worried. I worried all through the day. I worried when I went to bed.

Every single day, my entire day was lived in anticipation of the 10 to 12 times my heartbeat would skip. It started just a few months before, with that first incident of an irregular heartbeat, when the doctor assigned to my case came to my hospital bedside and made his pronouncement:

You have atrial fibrillation. You have a high risk of stroke. If we can’t control it with medication, we will have to use the defibrillator to give you a shock.

I was 35 years old. This was not supposed to be happening.