Bunny - here's the funny thing, I had a bunch of appointments with a Cardiologist, who then referred me to the Electrophysiologist in the same group and had several appointments with him, and he never told me the name of the arrythmia I had - He just said that he was fairly certian where the probem was coming from and that an ablation would fix it. I have a follow-up in June, and plan to ask him then - just to know.
The episodes I had were short in duration, but I could have them on and off all day. The best way for me to explain it was that it felt like a fluttering in my chest, then my heart would start racing. If I panicked, it got worse. It would last for just a couple of minutes, but then sometimes I would have one after another. I was the same as you, I started spending all my time at home, I didn't want to leave the house for fear that I would need to go to the ER.
For me, the actual procedure was easy, it was the recovery that was harder. I was given general anesthesia. I remember being wheeled into the EP lab, and several people moving me into positon, then nothing, until they woke me up. My entire procedure took about 4 1/2 hours and the ablated two spots. The recovery for me was hard because the anesthesia made me very sick and I threw up for 4 hours afterwards and felt sick for almost a week.
The Dr. said that I could have episodes for 30 to 90 days after the procedure, but what I had problems with was that the post-procedure episodes felt different than the pre-procedure episodes, so I started panicking again. Thank goodness my husband is very calm and managed to keep me from completely freaking out. The other problem I had was that the Dr. said I should feel back to normal in a couple of days, well since it took longer than that for me, I started getting depressed that it didn't work, but after 7 days, I really did start to feel better, and feel really good now.
I had absolutely no pain from where the catheters were inserted - I had one on each side, and now I can't even tell where they were.
I'm happy to answer any questions - before I had the procedure, I was desperate to find information about it, and what it was really like to have it.
Good Luck and let me know if you have any other questions!
Annie