Jurdoc, Bird printed off your emails for me, man. Sorry I'm just getting to them.

I don't know your docs personally or their writings. That's not unusual unless they've been published in Circulation or one of the other biggies.

Give serious thought to telling your doc before you vape or eat weed. Unless you're one of those who plans to no matter what you might hear in return. Any responsible cardiovascular physician will discourage any further potential irritation to your cardioelectrcity, especially with the high-dollar Medtronic gadget you've already got installed. (Or Guidant, not sure what they installed.) You've got a built-in backup against further v-tach but not against other rhythm anomalies and not against aneurysmal development or aggravation. Sounds like you had a dramatic response to smoked weed, which is why, even in eaten or vaped form, you need to think hard before taking that risk, even with a backup device in place.

I couldn't tell from what you wrote to Bird, but somewhere along the process of getting diagnosed and treated, you've been getting echocardiograms, right? I want to know what your RV looks like and whether you had any hypertrophy or signs of aneurysm in that RV--and what type of ARVD infiltration you have. Also whether you have any LV involvement. If you're not going in for six-month echocardiograms and checkups, you might ask why not.

Your ARVD doesn't have anything to do with your being an early preemie. It's not a congenital defect that people are born with like an atrial septal defect or valve stenosis. In half the population who have it, it's a tendency for your heart to target out and kill off little areas of its RV wall that results in that propensity for v-tach. The tendency itself is carried genetically, which means it's programmed in the chromosomes you got from your ancestors. Half the ARVD population just get it for no genetic reason, though.

You're a lucky man to be alive, as you must know. Your condition is fairly common, and about a fifth of young folks who keel over from sudden cardiac death do so because of ARVD.