moving right along...

Shocking Experience

by SMITTY - 2010-05-09 12:05:07

Hello Gracie,

While I never feel the electrical impulses anymore, I did go through a very rough period of that for a few years at the beginning. The one thing you are not likely to be feeling is not the electrical impulse making your heart beat. Now let me confuse things more. Some of the electrical impulse that is sent from the pacemaker to make your heart beat is problem taking a detour and stimulating a nerve, or muscle, in your chest and you may be able to feel this stray current. Fortunately, most of the time this can be stopped by an adjustment in the pacemaker settings.

Some of the changes tried on me were to lower the low setting from 80 to 60. The thought behind that was at a low setting of 60 my pacemaker would be sending an impulse less often and that would eliminate or reduce the frequency of the shocks I was feeling. It worked to a degree but didn't solve my problem. The next thing tried was to lower the power or voltage output of the pacemaker. This one helped more but I was still getting shocked many times a day. The next thing tried was to convince me that what I was feeling was probably pain from the shingles, or neuropathic pain. They failed to convince me either of these was the source of my pain.

My salivation was that after all the changes in PM settings were the pain was not continuous. Finally I was assigned to a new electrophysiologist who accepted that something was wrong and the source was the pacemaker. I no longer recall all of the tests I endured, but the conclusion was stray current from the ventricle lead was stimulating the right side phrenic nerve and causing my pain.

The options I was offered were to go in and try to relocate the ventricle lead which had now been in place for 5 years or I could get an injection to deaden that nerve. The choice seemed to be a no brainier. I quickly said, deaden the affected nerve. I got the injection and within 48 hours I was pain free for the first time since I got my pacemaker.
But that is not the end of the story. Deadening the phrenic nerve caused paralysis of the right side diaphragm. That has brought its own litany of problems. So, it seems that everything about a pacemaker comes with a price, some of which cannot be foreseen.

As for your weight gain due to cortisone, that probably will go away as your body recovers from the upset to its metabolism caused by cortisone. At least time took care of a similar problem for me.

I wish you the best,

Smitty