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My Apple Watch buzzed on my wrist while I watched TV the other night. The screen flashed red and alerted “Atrial Fibrillation.” I felt no discomfort other than the mild indigestion of an aging digestive system. I mentioned the signal to Mary Anne. The first alert startled me two weeks earlier.

I’d been placed on heart medication after being diagnosed with arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat caused by errant electrical impulses. I felt the symptoms a few months into the pandemic, and they increased as the politics in our country became uglier.
“Please call the doctor,” Mary Anne said in her soft defining voice. I made the appointment the next day, and they scheduled me to have a monitor placed on my chest…..