Hi,
I am 57 years old and just had a pacemaker put in 10 days ago. I am still shocked over it as I thought I was in pretty good health, until I had a total grade 3 heart block, Bradycardia I believe it is called.
I came here looking for support and to have questions answered as like I said, still new to this. I want to know how much my life will change now with this, what I can and cannot do, everything. I hope this is the right place to be.
Do many people chat here? I have been her three times and no one was online to chat. It that normal?

 

 

Welcome to the Pacemaker Club

Your life with a pacemaker will not be very little different from that you have been living for some number of years since you are 57 years old, except you will probably feel better. It will take a few weeks to a couple of months to get back to normal after the surgery. Most of us are back to our normal activity in a couple of weeks, Your doctor probably gave you instructions on activity you are allowed to that involves your arm use. You should follow those instructions. Other than that you will not be able to play contact sports such as football because you want to avoid a blow directly on your pacemaker, Not that it would hurt the pacemaker, It can take the blow, but it will hurt you and it could damage the leads going from the pacemaker to your heart.

If I could give one piece of advice, which I learned the hard way, is don't think that pacemaker has taken over the job of making your heart beat. If you got one for bradycardia (slow heart rate) you have an on demand pacemaker. What that means is your pacemaker only works when needed. It has and two setting (actually it has hundreds of setting, but I can't talk about most of them). They are a low setting and high setting which your doctor chose according to what he knows of your needs. Your pacemaker's job is to monitor your heartbeat and not let it go below the low setting. Even if your heart rate is above the low PM setting the Pacemaker will monitor your heart rate and pitch into replace any beats your hearts natural pacemaker fails to cause. When your heart rate goes above the high setting, the pacemaker continues to monitor your heart, but it just sits on the side line until your heart rate is blow the upper set point.

There are a few high energy devices you will need to avoid. One that comes to mind is a MRI device. Others are electric welding machines and the like.

As time goes by and you have questions post them here. You will get answers. I'm sure there will be others to come in and tell you much more about your new pacemaker than I can so sit back and relax. As for the chat room, I have never participated, but it used to be active, but I haven't heard many talk about using it lately. Maybe they are all just waiting for someone like to you come to aboard and so they can start back.

Good luck with your pacemaker.

Smitty

 

You might look at my response to the previous post.

Smitty covered your questions well. My suggestions are to get back to normal activities as soon as you feel like it. The only limitation is to avoid lifting your pacer side arm above your shoulder for a few weeks. Otherwise, go for it.

Don't let the term Heart Block scare you. It has nothing to do with a blocked artery like in heart attack. It's easy to get it confused with all the TV ads showing blockages. What you actually have is a blocked electrical circuit and the pacer simply wires around it.

If you find yourself short of breath or having an erratic heart beat with exercise, let us know. The upper pacing limit is commonly set too low which means your available HR is limited. There is also a thing called Rate Response in the pacer which should be turned off as it can interfere with your natural pacing.

Welcome to the forum,

frank

 

I was 50 when I was diagnosed with a very similar condition, except I was passing out and my pauses would come in bunches, pause for 4 seconds, beat once pause for 9 seconds, beat once, pause for 6 seconds, beat once and then slowly back to normal.

I was shocked, scared and confused. I had basically 2 days to get head wrapped around the whole thing (doc actually scheduled me for emergency surgery before I put on the breaks but my nurse who was a great patient advocate and helped me delay the process, get the info I needed and talked to me at length about what was going on finally said that I really needed to get this, mainly because she was afraid I would pass out and severely hurt myself or worse, that I wouldn't restart after one of my pausing sessions which were getting more common and longer while I was in the hospital.

Next I went through what I can only describe as the same steps someone deals with when grieving or after suffering a loss. Denial, rage, depression, bargaining... the whole gamut. I recommend you prepare yourself for this and just go with it, don't fight it. I think my recovery would have been quicker if I understood, and the doctors understood, what was going oh psychologically. I had lost something precious, my immortality. Understanding what was going on helped a lot and the people here helped a lot also.

Next I totally agree with Frank. Get back to doing things as soon as possible. Take control of your situation by telling your doc and pacer tech what you WANT not the standard settings they will give you. I would be paced at 70 with an upper limit of 120. I had to fight and argue at first but now my lower limit is 50 (I have a resting heart rate in the low 60's / high 50's normally) and have a high end in the mid 180s (my age says that should be 169, but my mt. bike thinks otherwise). So now I have rate response turned off (there was something about they couldn't actually turn it off but the setting is so high I will never reach it per my tech) and I pace less than 1%. I do have a bit of afib but I am addressing that with exercise and trying not to have to go on meds for it. My weight is down, my bp is down, my health is up and I have decided that on my 120 mile bike ride on July 10th through the Rockies I will have somewhere on me a little sign that says, "Battery powered by BoSci."

Hope this helps and if you have any questions drop us a message or post online. Right now you should be focusing on recovery, physically and psychologically. Once recovered it is time to start living your life again, hopefully even better than before.

 

Thanks for all the information. It feels like home here. Like I will get my questions answered by some pretty heart savy people.
You did answer all my questions and reading what others have said is helping so much too.
Thanks for all your help.
And hey, lets chat some time soon.

 

Hi there, I dont get into chat too often when people are there, I think its partly because we are spread all over the globe.

I'm 57 and got my pm 18 months ago, exactly the same as you. I was scared to death, thought my life would change, didnt understand why I needed it when I was fit without it.

However, 18 months on, I dont get cold any more, my lips dont go blue, I can walk fast up hill, soooo perhaps I did need it after all.

I'm fitter than the average 57 year old, so I do pretty much the same as any average 30 something would do. However, I never overstretch my left arm, I protect it when breaking up fights at work! lol.

Enjoy life with your pm, you are certainly safer with it than you were without it!

HH