Bio-feedback

• by joy1
• 2008-05-28 01:05:16
• General Posting
• 1159 views
• 1 comments

Reading some of the responses this morning; it was mentioned about how anxiety can cause some of the same sensations and symptoms as what some people believe they're PMs are doing.

Frank, you are so right on! Had to say that. Keep putting your two cents in because you make alot of sense.

My husband uses this particular analogy all the time, so I thought it would be germane to share it: You take your car in for a tune up. You have it worked on. Then when you get it back after it's suppose to be fixed, you hear all kinds of other squeaks and rattles that hadn't been there before you took it in for the tune-up. Sound familiar? They were there all along but you just didn't notice 'em. Getting a heart device is the same thing. Suddenly we feel things we didn't feel before and anxiety feeds our fears and the pain and fear of our conditions and the "machines" fuel our fear, fueling our anxiety. WOW! What a vicious cycle! Nearly all of us do it. It's why we need to be so gentle with one another. No matter our age, we're all scared kids at heart when "IT" happens to us.

My Story...I brought up bio-feed back because it was brought up to me by my EP! I kept complaining I couldn't tell what my heart was doing anymore because of all the meds and the ICD. They had changed the way my heart worked and felt. She later, in a report to the rest of the cardio team, brought out the fact that I had lived with my heart problem untreated, for so long, that when I wouldn't feel right, had altered my behavior to accommodate the change. I instinctively had known to physically pace and it would put my heart back into a normal rhythm. I went nearly 15 years between heart attack and cardiac arrest. Throughout those years I was not under the regular care of any one doctor, Nearly anytime I had gone to a doctor, I generally was in a vtach which would not resolve itself by pacing it out. For years it had driven my doctors and nurses nuts because I would never stay in bed but get up and pace. Of course all that movement threw off their EKG readings ~grinning~ That was the bio-feedback my EP had recognized.

Anyway, a huge cause of my anxiety after my arrest with the change in all my meds and the ICD implant was anxiety over not feeling normal anymore. I no longer could take care of myself. And boy did that cause anxiety like no tomorrow and the resulting increase in palpitations and arrhythmic problems. After wearing a holter monitor a number of times, it was finally figured out by everyone that what i was feeling was "that drop!" in my heart rate not the onset of v-tach I had always recognized. My favorite childhood personalities were a clown named J.P. Patches and Mr. Rogers. I'm still a kid at heart.