Any hope? (long)

• by MonteCristo
• 2009-06-14 06:06:52
• General Posting
• 1044 views
• 3 comments

Hi Everyone,

First I have to say that I am happy to have found this site because if I hear just one more time, "just accept the fact that you have a pacemaker and move on" from a person that doesn’t have one and wouldn’t affect their life if they did have one, I’m going to scream.

I feel so lost and really angry and believe it or not a little embarrassed, as I’m sure all of you did as well at first.

Here’s my very long story made a little shorter:

First, I’m 37 y/o and an elite cyclist. I have been an athlete my whole life, first a martial artist and gymnast then surfer and rock climber and finally at the age of 30 a cyclist. I went from complete beginner to elite in 6 months and then rode for teams in Italy and Spain as well as the States and now I’m in Costa Rica.

I’m leaving quite a few things out here for the sake of brevity.  About 3 years ago while training I was doing intervals, something along the lines of 10 minutes at anaerobic threshold power (using a power meter device called a PowerTap), the heart rate was about 170. Well after the last interval my heart rate dropped back down normally to 100 while soft-pedaling when all of a sudden it shot up to 220. It stayed pegged up there for a couple of minutes then all of a sudden it dropped down to about 80, my normal heart rate at that moment. It scared the hell out of me. Over the ensuing years it happened just about every time I rode but I ignored it most of the time because it always went away. I had seen a cardiologist who had done a battery of tests: blood tests, Holter monitor, echo stress test, etc... But as Murphy’s Law would have it nothing showed up, I was completely normal. Fast forward to when I moved down to Costa Rica, I took out an insurance plan (very cheap) and went to a cardiologist who sent me to an electrophysiologist. Unfortunately the size of this country only warrants 1 (ONE!) EP. She said I need a catheter ablation with radio frequency to eliminate the tachycardia. For the next few months after the ablation I felt good, I was training everyday, entered some ad-hoc races and was looking forward to more serious competition in the elite ranks. Then one day it came back, I was climbing up the volcano with a medium tempo and bang! I was at 220 again. I called her up and she told me that I needed the ablation again, no tests to confirm, nothing. After the second one in April I started feeling horrible; arryhthmia, tachycardia, bradycardia, skipped beats all while at rest, I felt 110 years old. I called her again to explain and she told me to take an anti-arryhthmic medication and to come see her in TWO months! I couldn’t take it anymore, I was feeling like crap. I wound up finding another EP (so now there are 2 and there are problems between them). He put me on a Holter Monitor where he discovered tachycardia, bradycardia, everything. During that 24 hour period, which I had actually felt really good believe it or not, I had a minimum heart rate of 22, a max of 194, 717 pauses many being 3 seconds and the longest being 5.6 seconds. He said I need another ablation right away. I went in on June 4, 2009 for an ablation. 15 minutes before they took me into the room he broke the news to me that I may need a pacemaker if the ablation doesn’t work, I was not prepared to hear that. While doing it he inadvertantly gave me a complete heart block due to something the first doctor did (but I have no way of proving that) thereby necessitating the pacemaker. He told me later that with a pause of 5.6 seconds that was warrant enough for a pacemaker.

I’m a little frustrated with my current doctor but I have no other choice here as there is no one else. He simply doesn’t understand how important it is to me to be a competitive cyclist again. According to him: I can’t pick up my daughter, I can’t drive for 4 months, can’t even think about exercising for 1 year.

I may go back to New York to try to get some opinions (though without insurance I’ll be lucky to afford to walk in the front door of just one doctor. lol).

I’m sorry this is so long.

I don’t know enough about my situation because not even my current doctor knows what happened during the ablations with the first doctor. I don’t know enough about my pacemaker and about pacing limits, and accelerometer, etc... I do know that my pacemaker, a Medtronics Versa, has an upper limit of 130, if I return to cycling what the heck am I going to do with a limit of 130?!? I also know that I have this annoying nerve twitch (I believe its the phrenic nerve), it pounds like crazy that you can palpate it, but the doctor thinks I’m crazy because I didn’t have it when he felt for it. No respect from the doctor though I am a medical student myself.

Ok, I am going to end it here and if anyone has questions or comments then I will continue.

Thank you everyone for listening to my complaining, from everything I have read here you are all a great bunch of people.

Todd