First checkup

G’day everyone. I am a fairly active 64 yr young (retired) living in Australia. I had my first PM check today since implant 5 weeks ago. The tech told me my PM was pacing 32% of the time. He also told me that whenever my HR went above 60, that was ME not the PM! My cardiologist has decided to put me back on beta blocker Minax to help bring down my HR when it decides to go high for no reason. He told me since I won’t pass out anymore, the meds will help control the fluctuation.

I asked if he could tell me what happened to me 5 weeks ago when I had a 90 sec pause (recorded on my looprecorder implanted in  May). He said no, but that a 90 second pause was “impressive”!  So happy I impressed him!!!!

Anybody else trying to find out why or what happened before your PM was implanted? What else could happen with regards to the heart that the PM will not help with? Sometimes I still feel like a time bomb ready to go off! I had no choice or time to prepare for this procedure as it was all done in an emergency situation.

Am I wrong to feel this way or is this a bit normal considering the circumstances?

3 Comments

What pacemakers do not help with

by LondonAndy - 2017-11-01 19:27:38

a 90 second pause is alarming of course, and your pacemaker should ensure that doesn't happen again.  But think of your pacemaker as a "safety net" - it steps in when your heart is not beating enough.  It can't slow your heart down if it is beating too fast. Hence the need for other medication to help with that sort of thing.

normal!

by Tracey_E - 2017-11-02 09:50:04

It's normal to want to know what happened. It's normal to feel blindsided and worry what will happen next. It's normal to want to know what the heck happened because last week I was perfectly healthy. One of the hardest things for many of us to accept is that electrical problems most often come up at random for no known reason. Sometimes it's caused by medication, infection or surgery but more often than not we never get answers. Structurally the heart is normal and healthy, the plumbing is in good shape, but the wiring went wonky. Many of us do not have other health problems. I've seen members go through test after test  looking for answers that just aren't out there. The important thing to remember is you have the fix, at this point it doesn't much matter what the cause is. Next time your heart goes more than a second with out beating, the pacer will step in and tell it to get with the program. 

What is perfectly normal, but not necessarily rational, is fear of being a time bomb. Once we have the pacer, we have a 24/7 insurance policy there to step in any time our heart pauses. They likely ran tons of tests when you were diagnosed so if something else was going on they would have caught it.  It can take some time to learn to trust it, to not worry something else will go wrong, but most of us heal and get on with our lives and get to the point where we give it little thought. You'll get there too, don't beat yourself up if you aren't there yet. It takes time to heal and adjust. 

It's common to be less conservative with the beta blockers to control racing after we are paced. Without the pacer, they have to find the line between enough drugs to bring the rate down but not so much that the rate dips dangerously low. With the pacer, that can't happen so they can get better control of the racing through medication. 

Thank You

by datslt - 2017-11-02 20:12:24

Thanks TraceyE for your great words of comfort. I know I will get there and start living free again soon!

You know you're wired when...

You play MP3 files on your pacer.

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