This weekend’s Ohio Valley Cyclocross finale marked our family’s end to another great season of bike racing. The drenching rains made for true CX conditions. There’s just something about racing a bike through ankle deep mud that’s inherently uplifting. Math folks call such a common denominator. This pic of teammate and pal, Rachel Fagerburg sums […]
There was important news this month on statin drugs. As one of the world’s most effective and commonly used medications, statins provide great writing topics. Lots of people have high cholesterol–including cyclists. Lots of people are interested in avoiding our mostly deadly disease. I’d like to tell you about a recently-published (Lancet) landmark study that […]
Categories
Thanks for your grace…
I’m still very sad about losing my Mom. The sadness seems to come in waves. I figure this will persist for a long while. Getting back to work has helped tremendously. Focusing on taking care of people helps me. It seems there is still a lot of AF out there. Sadness doesn’t seem to help […]
Categories
Goodbye Mom–Thanks
So Mom… Your love and devotion to me approached infinity. As a younger, I longed for nothing. You loved me—whether I was on a podium or not. This was a mother’s love. Your love. I knew you cared about my achievements, but now I understand: you loved seeing me happy. Thanks for that. You waited […]
Categories
A different place
There’s severe pain. Damn masses. There’s fear. Damn unknown. There were all those hugs. Dinners. Rides. Shoes. Clothes. College tuition. Laundry. And much more. A Mother’s love is different than a Dad’s. Obviously. I wasn’t an easy child. Most cardiologists weren’t easy on their parents. My Mom took really good care of me. Now I’ll […]
I learned a lot from putting together an abstract for a national heart meeting. More than just learning how to e-submit, e-upload and e-print a large poster; More than what t-tests and chi-squares measure; More than learning that females respond differently to AF ablation; And surely more than which coffee shop offers the best work […]
Here is our AHA poster. In powerpoint version: Gender-specific results of AF Ablation in a Private Practice Setting And in PDF: Gender-specific results of AF ablation in a Private Practice Setting-PDF The actual poster: (Click to enlarge.) I would like to thank my co-authors. Without their volunteerism and can-do ethos, we would simply not know […]
Categories
Cycling Wed on leave this week
I’ll have to take a break this week. Most of the blood in my writing centers is being diverted to the digestion of AHA material. It was a great meeting. One in which I learned a lot, presented our own research and met some European colleagues. There was not a lot to like–except flying home […]
Hey all. I put together an AF-treatment power-point presentation for a group of primary care doctors, ER doctors and others this morning. The title of the talk is 2011 Update in the treatment of AF. The focus of the presentation will be five aspects of AF treatment: The best tool to treat AF A better […]
I want to apologize in advance. I did something this week that induced my goofy neurons to run amok. I took a day off and went to the movies with my wife and son. (Yes, the iPhone stayed in the car.) We saw MoneyBall. It’s a beautiful Sports Life story. You should go see it […]
There is more bad news for the newest atrial fibrillation ablation tool–Medtronic’s Ablation Frontiers catheter-ablation system. After an overly positive press release last month, I wrote about the system’s safety issues. Namely, that although effective, the multi-electrode PVAC circular ablation catheter was associated with an increased risk of stroke. Previous studies on the catheter showed […]