Fallen lead

Hey everyone,

I have not been on this forum in a long time as everything was going pretty good. So a little backgraound, I have had my dual pacemaker for 5 years. On the day I had my pacemaker put in the top lead fell and started pacing my diaphram. Well 2 more surgeries later and I have had no issues. So last Saturday night I woke up at 12:45 and reached out to my husband and told him I did not feel right. At first I felt druged until I sat up and that sensation went away, but my mouth got real dry and my right hand and leg would not stop moving, which my husband asked why I was moving it and I told him I wasn't doing it. Then he noticed my left arm was weak and I could not grab the bottle of water he had gotten me. Next my speak got real slow and I had a hard time talking. So he called the ambulance as he thought I was having a stroke (I am 54 yo). At the hospital they did a CT scan which came back clear, they could not perform an MRI as my PM is not MRI compatible. So they admitted me for 3 days and took a CAT scan with dye (which they only found cysts on my thyroid) and 15 vials of blood. I spoke with 2 neurologists which were confused as to why part of my symptoms were neurological and some were not. Well the movement in my leg and arm stopped after about 6 hours, but when I woke up the next morning I developed a stutter. After I was discharged I got ahold of my cardiologist to let him know they wanted me to change the medicine he had me on, he told me to come in. The next day they did an interogation to see if it caught any kind of episode that night and instead they found that my top lead had fallen again sometime between my last interogation in February and Friday. She said it looked like it was pacing my ventricle which is already being paced. THey turned my top lead of and sent me to the hospital for an xray. I asked the tech if this could have been what caused my episode last week, she did not think so. Well this was Friday and I noticed Saturday I started to stutter less and today I have not stuttered at all. Not sure if these two issues are coincident or not. Has anything like this happened to anyone else?

1 Comments

Difficulty speaking for over 24 hours.

by Selwyn - 2020-05-19 13:50:05

Heart things can sometimes affect the brain, especially if you have a slow pulse, an arrhythmia, or clots that form in the heart and end up in the brain. If the brain is malfunctioning this comes under the expertise of a neurologist. Hence you can get neurological symptoms when there is a problem with your circulation ( If you have ever seen anyone faint ( vaso-vagal attack  and then kept in a upright position, they can have a fit ( convulsion).  Best not to keep them upright trying to give brandy!! 

Any symptom persisting over 24 hours related to your brain function, as in loss of speech or difficulty forming words, suggests the possibility of a stroke. CT scans are not reliable in showing  mild brain damage.

If I may relate my late Mother's health. She lost her speech entirely for days and weeks on numerous occasions. She had multiple CT scans of her head ( in Sprain, in the UK at least twice), all normal. We were on nodding communication ( She understood but could not form the words). We had to have  a phone message system for help that could be activated by a push button as she lived alone. After all if you cannot speak, you cannot phone for help! At all these episodes she had a normal ECG.

Eventually, she went to hospital for minor surgery, the admitting doctor did a pre-operative ECG and found atrial fibrillation with some asystole ( heart stopped). She ended up with a pacemaker and medication for atrial fibrillation, and warfarin. She never had any more episodes of difficulty with her speech. It is almost certain that she was having small clots going to her brain from the undiagnosed paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, causing thrombotic strokes too small to be detected on CT scanning.  I have said elsewhere here, it is better to treat the patient than the test!

 

 

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