Feel like a bag of nerves

Hi all, My non metallic PM was fitted at the end of Jan 12. I felt ok for the first week/ 10 days but now I have this constant nervous feel or flutter on my chest which is stressing me out. I a not out of breath but feel like I am sometimes and heavy breath when I walk upstairs but I take a deep breath and I am ok. I do not know whether my mind is playing tricks on my but the feeling is the same as when I stood outside the headmasters office all those years ago awaiting the cane. Has anyone experienced this 'fluttering' I take my pulse and its at about 80bpm, al lot higher than what it used to be when playing professional rugby. I notice that when taking my pulse over the minute it seems to miss a beat and that is when I get my sinking feeling or nervous feeling. I notice also that my Garmin FR60 Heart Rate monitor now does not work and I wonder whether its the battery of whether its because I have a PM? Your help would be greatly appreciated...I am a male 44 years old and am stressing my beautiful wife out feeling ill.

4 Comments

Seek Professional advice!

by IAN MC - 2012-02-22 06:02:36

If you felt OK at first and then things changed, don't live with it. You don't want months of standing outside the headmaster's office. It would seem to me that it can be one of three things :-

- you have developed atrial fibrillation or flutter ( the higher pulse rate, and the irregularity, could be symptoms ( but anxiety could be the cause of the raised HR)..I assume that your GP or practice nurse would happily give you an ECG to see if this is the case

-the leads on your PM could be touching a nerve or playing up in some way. Contact your PM clinic.

- you may be imagining it. Sort out the first two and if they are negatives then address this. The feelings may disappear.

I have just bought a Heart Rate Monitor, mine is not a Garmin it's "Polar" and I notice that they advise a stress test on a treadmill before using it to ascertain if it's compatible with PM's or not. I don't know if Garmins are the same ??

By the way I used to live in your part of the world..in Beverley .. a great place !

Hope you sort out your problem asap

Ian

They're Coming Through the Wire!!!!

by donr - 2012-02-22 08:02:59

Hooker! BTDTWTRS (Which is short for Been There, Done That, Wear That Rugby Shirt!) No, I'm not a Rugger, but our #2 Son was - till he broke his back a few yrs ago. He was a 150 lb Scrum Half, who said his success came from being scared to death (Well, not EXACTLY his words, but they cannot be used on this family site) so he ran fast. Fortunately, it was a only small crack in a vertebrae, but it ended his career.

Me - I was a career soldier - so I know exactly the feeling you are describing. Both Pre- & Post PM implant. And, I'll tell you what caused my problems. It was an extremely simple, solution, so try it FIRST!

All my adult life, I was a 72 BPM HR. Just before I had my PM implanted, on the way to the OR, the surgeon & I were talking & he asked me what HR I wanted my PM adjusted to, 72 BPM, I told him. He said "Fine." So I came out of surgery, ready to take on the World, starting with brawl against the entire World Cup Rugby team from that year. I felt THAT good. On the way home from the hosp, Wife & I stopped at a lumber yard & picked up a bunch of boards to use on the house we were building & nect day, I was back at work on the house - one armed, of course, since the left one was kinda worthless at the time.

Fast forward about 3 weeks till my first check up w/ my cardio. I felt like pure, unadulterated CRAP! After cleaning up the floor w/ 20 or so Ruggers, I didn't even want to mess w/ new born babies! All the time I felt just like I did before having the paddle (we don't use canes here) applied by our school principal (Headmaster) for some infraction in front of half the school body. The same as in Viet Nam when the mortars started impacting in our camp. I called it "Hyper Alert." Yes, my wife was sensing it in me, also & it was driving her to distraction.

Sitting there w/ the Hockey Puck hanging over my PM awaiting the results of the computer print out. My pulse was over 80. My lower limit was set at 80! Suddenly, I knew the answer to my feeling. TOO HIGH a resting pulse! It put me in a state of continual, mild anxiety after three weeks of it.

Cardio agreed to drop lower limit to 75; did so & told me to go out & walk up & down the hall for 5 minutes. I did so, came back, sat down & felt NORMAL.

As to the "Missing" beat - Before you got your PM, I'll bet you never even thought about your heart beat - especially you never took your pulse! For starters here, you did not tell us WHY you have the PM, so I have to make an educated guess about what follows.

You have been "Hyper Alert" for several weeks now. Your heart has been highlighted to you as being defective in some way, so you are now super sensitive to any weird little thing that goes on in your chest & man, does it catch your attention. And - it is dramatic to you. You get a sinking feeling - a sudden rush of adrenalin to cover the primal fear of your heart quitting on you, followed by the letdown as your body recovers from the adrenalin rush.

Welcome to the club! The PVC club. My educated guess at this point is that you have sensed an event called a Premature Ventricular Contraction (PVC). All people w/ NORMAL HR's have them. They just don't sense them. I'll bet YOU had them pre-PM.

Let's put heart function in a bit of perspective now. IF your NORMAL HR was 60 BPM, your heart beat about 3.5 MILLION times in a 30 day month. Tough little bugger, isn't it? I'll have to destroy a pair of lifetime beliefs you've had. 1) Father Christmas does NOT exist! 2) There is no such thing as a Heart Rate! Each and every beat of your heart is individually timed by an electrical signal generating node in your heart called the Atrial Sinus Node (AS, I'll call it) Now that little timer is not as accurate as your PM's timer, so it can occasionally count down to zero a bit fast & tell your heart to beat before you are expecting it to. That might catch your attention, but not as dramatically as the situation where that signal, which travels down the heart to the ventricles and is delayed by the heart electrical path, does not get delayed enough & your ventricles contract too soon. Well, the ventricles do not fill completely w/ blood - not enough delay, so when they contract EARLY, it is not as strong a beat. Therefore, in your hyper alert state, you think you MISSED a beat! It was really there, but you just missed sensing it. The next beat is normal & you do sense that one, but it feels stronger than normal. You just had a PVC! Scarier than being tackled by the whole other side!

If you read a lot of posts here, you will find a lot of mention of PVC's troubling people w/ PM's. Yep, they do. Dunno why, but it is harsh reality.

My first symptom of impending PM was a single PVC that I sensed. I can tell you to the minute when it occured & what I was doing - it was that dramatic a sensation. What I have outlined is just a RATIONAL explanation for what is happening to you. It is also the most simple & easiest explanation to fix.

Get them to re-set your base rate to whatever your pre-PM HR was. That will, or should get rid of the Hyper Alert symptom.

As to the potential PVC - that's a tough one! a large part of it is psychological. Your mind is sensing & amplifying a normal occurrence & turning it into a fear, causing anxiety. Have them download the PM to see if you are having a HIGH percentage of PVC's. If so, it is a physical problem your heart has developed. If not, it's purely in your head.

After about 7 yrs hosting my PM I got up to a 33% PVC rate. They took care of that w/ meds & my PM. Prior to that, I had them, but eventually learned to accept them as normal variances in heart beat & never even noticed them after a while. It was a case of reprogramming my head into what to expect. That took several years.

Now remember - this is all an educated guess at what is disturbing you. It fits your symptoms & is a simple explanation - a great place to start.

The best to you in your quest for normalcy.

BTW: I'm 75 & rec'd my PM at 66.

Don

They won't kill you!

by donr - 2012-02-22 10:02:12

I just re-read my post from this AM about PVC's.

A bit of a further explanation is called for.

When I first had them, I was worried out of my mind. MY cardio & his head nurse kept trying to convince me that they were no big deal. I can recall him saying "Don, they won't kill you!" After hearing that a time or two, I responded w/ "Doc, that may be, but they sure make you feel like crap!". I also heard it from his nurse & when I saw his EP associate for excessive PVC's - nearly 7 yrs later, he spontaneously said "Don, they won't kill you!". Well, by then, I turned into a believer! I had come to accept the fact that they would, indeed, not kill me.

A word of warning: IF, IF, you have them, the PM download report will tell you how many you have had since the last download. Remember that your heart beats about 3.5 Million times in a month. 1% of that is 35,000 PVC's. That's a big number. It can really get your attention. But it is less than 1 PVC every minute of the month!

Now, you asked what you can do. If you can keep up w/ the youngsters playing rugby, there's no reason why you cannot ref at ANY level.

Pulse taking: That, to me is in the same category as taking my own BP! I QUIT!!!!! Why? Because it was stressing me out. Please do not let pulse taking become a fixation that stresses you out. It can do that easily when you have an arrhythmia problem. If you feel you really need it done, ask your wife to do it & report her results to you. That way you will not feel every little deviation from "Normal." I do that. Wife has become pretty good at doing it & has a decent feel for what is good & bad. It really removes stress to have her feel my wrist & report that "you only had a few" during the minute. You see, she recalls how I felt when I was running 30% + PVC's, and that it never bothered me at all when it was about 10%. SO, she can filter the data so that I do not have to.

Don

I have had the feeling

by mjayjock - 2012-02-28 09:02:05

I have had that feeling you are talking about. For me it felt like my heart flipping in my chest. I happened a day or so after the PM implant and subsequent cardioversion for a-fib and then it happened again last week when I was taken off an antiarrythmal drug - flecanide. I started taking the flecanide again and it did not come back. I know that I am back in a-fib from a doctors visit last week so that could be part of your problem. I remember the doc saying it (the sensation) was not serious but it does get your attention and I found it hard to fall asleep the night it happened to me. I would definitely suggest that you re-read all the good comments above and go see your doctor. Best Wishes, Mike

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