Many people know Mitch Lafon as the host of “One on One with Mitch Lafon,” a part of Talking Metal Digital. For years, Lafon has interviewed hard-rock and heavy-metal immortals such as Lemmy Kilmeister of Motorhead, Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister.
But there is something about Lafon that many do not know and that at times made him feel less than immortal. Lafon suffers from a cardiac condition known as atrial fibrillation (AF). Atrial fibrillation is an unpredictable and rapid heart rate that can often be associated with fatigue, dizziness and difficulty breathing, and it increases the risk for cardiovascular disease, such as stroke. And as Lafon learned to cope with AF, he has chosen to share his story to help others who also struggle with AF and other heart conditions.
Lafon explained to me the painful physical experience of AF. “It’s not something that’s with you 24 hours a day. You’re not always in AF. It’s just sometimes your electrical current misfires or is misread by the heart receptors, and your heart starts beating very quickly. It’s gone up in my case all the way up to 180 beats per minute. And as it does that, it feels like a fish out of water flopping on your chest,” he explained. “You get a little short of breath; you get a little tired. As the days go on, because the episodes can last 12 hours, it really is as if you were running a marathon for 12 straight hours. It really tires you out.”
While the physical shock and discomfort caused by AF events is disconcerting, what is equally upsetting is the unpredictability of the cardiac episodes. “I started having this when I was 29, and it just came out of the blue. I mean, I was sitting in front of the TV. I remember it very well,” he recalled. “It was 9 or 9:30 at night, and all of a sudden I started feeling these weird feelings in my heart. And it wouldn’t go away. I was at my house, and I phoned my mom and said ‘I don’t know what this is. I think you need to come and get me and take me to a hospital.’”
Not only are the events unpredictable in terms of when they would occur, but also there is nothing in Lafon’s lifestyle or history that could have predicted he would develop AF. “My mom and dad are still alive; They’re in their 80’s. [Neither] of them [has] heart issues. My grandparents had passed away before I was born. Apparently, it was from non-heart-related issues,” he said. “When I got to the hospital, they said your heart is beating this and that, and they gave me this intense questioning like, ‘Have you taken cocaine? Have you done this? Have you done that? I’m like – no. I was sitting in front of my TV. And they cardioverted it, and then they sent me home, and I thought ‘OK, that was strange’ and they referred me to a cardiologist. And it was very strange because from my existence I have never used a drug, not even when I was a teenager. I never did any pot. I don’t drink. I’m not overweight, so all the indicators of heart problems, I don’t have. So it was very frustrating, actually.”
Worse, there is no definitive “cure” for AF that guarantees that Lafon’s episodes will abate. “And then about a year later, and it happened again, and then more hospitals, more medication, more referrals to cardiologists, and they said that you have atrial fibrillation, and they tried different medications. And I kept having drug failures. They weren’t controlling it,” he said. “And as doctors aren’t able to figure it out, and you’re going through drug failures, and you’re spending time in [intensive-care units] and emergency rooms, you go, ‘Wow, what do I do with this?’ It’s not like a cold where you go ‘OK, I’ll sit at home 3 days, and I’ll be fine by Tuesday.’ Or you have a broken ankle, and you go, ‘OK, the cast is on for six weeks, and I’ll be fine again.’ And it’s tough to deal with”
Uncertainty can occur among AF patients. Not having a definitive treatment or cure leaves Lafon feeling uncertain about his future. In fact, Lafon, like many other individuals with heart conditions, finds himself questioning his own mortality. “When I was 29, and you go in there, you say to the doc, ‘Fix me up.’ And they say, ‘There’s nothing we can do.’ There’s no surgery; there’s no cure,” he said. “And of course, we’re talking almost 17 years ago. So 17 years ago, they’re looking at you like, ‘There’s nothing, dude. We have a few pills but there’s no cast; there’s no surgery; there’s no laser.’ It is what it is. You don’t know when you’ll be fine again, if you’ll be fine again.”
“And then it starts playing on you. It really puts all kinds of thoughts in your head like, ‘Does this mean I’m going to die at 50? Is this it? I’m not going to make 30? Does this mean do I see next week?’ And then as I have kids at the age of 35, I’m thinking, ‘Am I giving this to my kids? Am I condemning them?’ Every question comes to mind, and it becomes sometimes open-ended and there’s no answer to it. Does this mean I’m going to have a stroke?”
“They have said that there is an increased risk of stroke, especially as I get older, and that goes back to the anxiety. I’ve seen stroke victims. I’ve known others who’ve had parents who’ve had strokes. It’s not a pleasant thing. And to think that I have an X percentage increase over Tom, Dick and Harry, that’s not very comforting. Because that’s not a position that you’d like to be in where you can’t take care of yourself, where you can’t speak. And when you have a couple of kids at home, you go, ‘Boy, if I get incapacitated, who’s going to take care of them?’ So those things play on your mind.”
In fact, discussions of medication and unfortunate experiences in hospitals have at times made the issue worse. “Years ago when they had me on Coumadin, and they said, ‘Try to be careful. If you’re cutting something in the kitchen try not to cut your fingers. Try to drive slowly so you don’t have an accident.’ I’m like, ‘Oh my G-d.’ These days they put me on something called Xarelto, which is another blood thinner, and they hand you a leaflet that says there’s no antidote if you have any kind of bleeding or internal bleeding. It may not stop. So those things are very stress-inducing.”
“And everybody keeps telling me, ‘It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing.’ Well, every other pill has side effects. Yeah, but I’d rather have no side effects. No pill would be better, right?”
“And of course I’ve been near death a bunch of times. They’ve injected some medicines in me like Cardizem, for example, which it turns out I’m allergic to. How do you know you have an allergy to Cardizem until you take it? Which put me into anaphylactic shock and almost killed me. And I had to go through ICU. And they did a magnetic resonance [imaging] (MRI) of the heart, and they put something in called Gadolinium, which is MRI dye. And that also put me into anaphylactic shock. And also almost killed me. And you get that extra trauma to go on top of all the heart stuff. It just causes chaos.”
Lafon finds himself spending a great deal of time and energy managing AF. And as is the case for many individuals who suffer from chronic disease, that time and energy can interfere with life functioning. “In my 30s, I was having them roughly every 14 months; a little over a year, there’s been an episode. And then in 2012, I had it five times in a span of 2½ months. And that’s when the doctors said, ‘OK we’ve got to do the surgery. We have this thing called cryoablation, and we’ll fix that. So it progressively went from every 18 months to every 12 months. You know the heart doctor for a while there was, every 6 months, and then as I got into my late 30s, and it seemed to be controlled, I got into once a year.”
“And that year, 2012, obviously it was the five episodes. That meant five emergency rooms. And then after every episode, it was the follow-up, which meant five visits to the cardiologist. And then there was the surgery. And of course, in-between times, I report back to my personal physician, to my family doctor. I must have seen a doctor every two weeks. And that just wreaks havoc on your life. I mean you gotta find baby-sitting, you gotta get time off from work, and of course with doctors and emergency rooms, it’s not ‘I’ll be in at 10; I’ll be out at 10:30; I’ll have lunch with my client at 11.’ I’m in at 10, and I’ll be out when I’m out. And that’s really when it’s tough on your day, your scheduling.”
For many people, the disruption in role functioning results in a loss of self-esteem. People stop feeling like “themselves.” Lafon explains: “And it’s tough on your psyche because you just sit there, or I just sit there thinking, ‘I’m just the sick boy. I’m just the sick guy. Mr. Sicky is back at the doctor.’ And of course when you tell people what you do in your day, you’re like, ‘Oh, I was up at the doctors’ [office] today,’ and you can see that at some point, people get tired of ‘Oh, he’s sick.’ Or ‘Don’t ask Mitch, because there’s something about his health.’ Or at least that’s how I perceive it, and so that’s frustrating. A lot of this is perception. You perceive people to think, ‘Oh, he’s the sick guy.’ And that’s been especially frustrating the last six weeks, because I’ve been going through it again.”
All of these factors — the threat of a negative event, unpredictability, loss of role functioning — create stress and anxiety. “The anxiety has been there since 29. When the heart started going. I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t know if it was a heart attack. So there was that stress,” he explained. “And then when you’re 29, and they say, ‘You have to see your cardiologist.’ That was very stress-inducing. The reaction of my girlfriend at the time, and especially my mom, was very anxiety-inducing. Because with any mom, you say your son has a heart thing, you know they panic. No mom wants to see their son die before them, right? And it’s frustrating also because you’ll see doctors and they’ll say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. Take a couple of pills.’ All of that becomes very stress-inducing.
“And of course waiting for the next attack … Is it going to be tomorrow? It’s a hot day outside, [and] you’re out in the sun a little bit. You go, ‘Uh-oh. I’m going to have something tonight.’ You have a bad day at work that’s stressful. Is that going to set it off? You broke up with your girlfriend. Is that going to set it off? There’s this total sense of unknowing. You don’t know what causes this; you don’t know what triggers it. You know even if I want to go to a rock show, and so I’ll say, ‘OK, on April 23rd I’m going to go see Bryan Adams in concert and you go, ‘What if my heart goes? I hope it doesn’t go that day?’ It always play with my mind.”
One factor that influences self-concept and is often critical among individuals who struggle with chronic physical conditions is the amount and quality of social support. Unfortunately, many people are not familiar with AF, and therefore may not be as able to deliver good support when needed. People with chronic disease often report experiencing “everyday discrimination,” ranging from being made to feel “less than” to more direct discrimination at work, such as being fired. Unfortunately, Lafon has experienced this range of discriminatory experience.
“When I say atrial fibrillation, they don’t have a clue. But as soon as I start saying, ‘It’s a heart…,’ you don’t even have to say ‘condition.’ As soon as you say, ‘Heart’ they go, ‘Oh, my G-d’ and it becomes, ‘Are you going to live? Are you OK?’ It’s the end of the world.’ But sometimes an over-sympathetic approach becomes frustrating, because it almost becomes condescending.
“There’s a lot of what I’d call pseudo-sympathy with the ‘Oh, how are you doing?’ And I know people are trying to be nice and stuff. And when you’re trying to do your daily life, you’re trying to work, people are going ‘Are you sure you can do this? You sure you’re OK with your health?’ And I know they’re just trying to be nice; they’re trying to look out for you. But it’s almost like it’s emasculating. It’s like he can’t do anything, and if he can do something, you should give him a bon-bon. It’s like ‘Good for him” and that becomes frustrating, that over-sympathetic approach.”
“And then of course, there’s the opposite side, where people have no empathy, and they ignore you, or they don’t want to talk about it. Or you’ll post on Facebook, ‘Oh, I wasn’t feeling well today,’ and you’ll get the comments like ‘You and your sickness again.’ Come on! I do need to talk about it. Maybe not all the time, but it’s nice to get it out. You sort of want to say, ‘Hey, I’m going through something here. You want to listen for a second?’”
Lafon has found that being treated unfairly extended to his medical care. “And the treatment at the hospitals was very peculiar. You know the first one, they were like, ‘Oh, you must have been on a cocaine binge.’ And I’m like, ‘No.’ And after they developed the blood work, and they realized I was perfectly clean, the attitude of the staff changed. And when you’re 32 and 34, they were like, ‘You’re too young for this. Don’t worry, it’ll go away.’ And it’s not going away.”
Lafon has also experienced discrimination at work relating to his condition. “After one of my ablation surgeries, I was sent back to work by my cardiologist. A couple of weeks after my return, I was having a casual conversation with the direct team leader. As I mentioned the procedure and the medication I was taking, a look came over them, and the discussion ended. Four hours later, I was served with papers expelling me from work until I could prove I was [able] to work,” he recalled. “A slight overreaction, but the kind I’m sadly used to when the word ‘heart’ comes up in conversation. I was forced to run around begging doctors to declare me fit to work — which of course they had done by clearing me for work two weeks prior. My doctor qualified the ‘suspension’ letter as a reaction similar to cutting off one’s hand to cure a hangnail. But hysteria and overreaction is typical. I was of course returned to work, but only after much inconvenience, added stress, personal embarrassment and being left with a feeling that I’m not good or healthy enough. I would qualify the experience as being traumatic. Resilience has its limits, even for me.”
Lafon also says that the Canadian health care system has made his struggle easier. “The fact that in Canada, it’s covered. And you don’t have to worry about, ‘Do I pick this surgery, or do I pay my mortgage? Do I pick this surgery, or I send my kids to college? Do I pick this surgery, or do I put food on the table?’ As a Canadian, we don’t have to make that choice; It just is. I do think that medical care is a basic human right. As a father with a wife with two kids, that’s a choice you never want to make. If I had to have made that decision, I probably would have snapped. I would have had a total breakdown where the brain went, ‘Can’t compute anymore’”
Further, others have been very supportive. “There is one rock star, one guy in particular, who has been exceptionally supportive — Jay Jay French of Twisted Sister. On Aug. 4th, 2014, when I had an episode, I posted on Facebook ‘Running off to the hospital, heart’s going.’ He phoned, and he said, ‘Whoa, what the hell?’ And that was very kind of him. And in the last period where I had the surgery, we had these extended phone calls and he’s been very supportive. And he’s always been just, ‘Call me whenever you want, text me whenever you want.’ And without even me reaching out to him, if he sees something on one of my social media, he’ll phone or write right away.”
“And that’s really exceptional. Especially in the position he’s in, which is running a multi-million dollar business with Twister Sister, it’s not always easy to carve out 10 or 15 minutes for somebody. And yet he takes the time. And that’s very meaningful to me. Because there are other people in this world I know that are doing nothing, and they can’t take five minutes to phone. Jay Jay French of Twisted Sister has gone above and beyond. Bill Leverty of Firehouse has always been very kind and supportive. Russ Graham, who goes by the stage name Russ Dwarf of the Killer Dwarfs has been on the phone or on the text all the time.”
“Sometimes, as a reporter, you think X,Y, and Z are just using me because I can give them some press on their new album or their new tour. And when you get those calls or those emails, that talk about anything but [work], you realize we’re at a different level in this relationship. And that’s nice to feel.”
Lafon’s coping mostly involves acknowledging his condition, and his anxiety, but refocusing on his work, health and personal life. Anxiety often results in increased attention to threat stimuli. Controlling attention to focus on adaptive behaviors may improve anxiety. Further, initial research suggests that behavioral activation, or engaging in proactive, adaptive behaviors such as work, which is an efficacious treatment for depression, may also improve anxiety.”
“Honestly, that would be work. It’s really that old cliché, out of sight out of mind. I find that if I keep myself really busy; I do a lot of interviews; I go to a lot of shows; I take the kids out to this, that. Just keep yourself busy. Then you don’t have the time to think about it. And the less time you think about it, the less time it stresses you out. So there are times in a year, especially in the summer season, where there’s a lot of rock shows happening, and you’re at a concert almost every night. You just don’t have time. You physically don’t have time to think about anything except the task at hand.”
“You know, I’ve got to get to the parking; I’ve got to get to this; I’ve got to get my tickets. I’ve got to take the kids to the pool; I’ve got to take them to swim team. Keeping busy is the one thing — and that’s for any kind of anxiety. The less you think about it, and the more you just get on with life, the better it is. Like anybody else, that sometimes is a hard trap to get out of. It’s this Catch-22 – if you do too much, and you get too tired and you get too run down, who knows, you take the risk of the fibrillation to go off, whatever you might have. So you have to keep busy, but not too busy. Keeping it out of sight, out of mind, is the only thing that seems to work for me.”
Lafon remains optimistic, particularly about how cryoablation has improved his condition. “It’s nice to know that over the last 17 years, I’ve gone from no hope to hope, and people who are going to hear this today and might not go through it for the next 17 years because there is hope. And there is a surgery. There’s this new procedure called cryoablation, where they freeze these electrical receptors that are not working properly, and they do it by going through a vein in the leg,” he said. “There [were] no stitches in the leg after the surgery. It’s a three- or four-hour surgery, and by the afternoon, they have you up walking around, eating. It’s amazing what they’ve done. Now it doesn’t take the stress away from the whole thing, because there’s still the ‘Well, the surgery is 66 percent effective and 33% chance that we didn’t cure anything, and your heart problem might come back. And there was all kinds of, ‘We could poke a hole through the heart,’ and there was all that stress. But it’s still pretty remarkable that they can get in there without cutting you open and actually attempt a cure. That’s pretty remarkable.”
And Lafon hopes that people with AF will read this article and be encouraged that having AF is difficult, but that one can still have a full life. “I think people will be very surprised. I think people that either read what I do or listen to what I do and then somehow come upon this article will say, ‘Wow! Here’s a guy who can do 10 interviews a week, and who’s very present on social media, is always there. You wouldn’t think he’s going through this because of that philosophy, ‘Never let them see you sweat.’ Keep busy; keep doing things. So I think a lot of people will be surprised like he did five interviews this week, and he’s going through that?”
“How did he do that?”
