On a frigid November night in 2018, Michelle Sullivan came home from dinner with friends, took the dog out, and suddenly felt something off.

“I walked outside, and I could feel my heart go into an odd rhythm,” says Sullivan, an osteopath from southern Illinois whose husband, Bill, is an emergency physician.

A shower failed to relax her, and Sullivan suggested an EKG. “This is what happens when you’ve got two doctors living together,” she laughs. “I said, ‘I don’t think I have time for an EKG. Something’s really wrong.’”

When they hit the ER doors, her heart rate was 180. “I said, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to make it. I feel like I’m going to die right here,’” Sullivan recalls. “They hooked me up, and I said, ‘It’s AFib [atrial fibrillation], isn’t it?’ Yeah. It was AFib.”

And then…n

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