New Lead

• by Creaky
• 2011-06-04 12:06:34
• Batteries & Leads
• 1566 views
• 1 comments

Here goes another update to this increasingly long saga. Had a new ventricular lead placed 2 days ago. (My pacemaker has only been in for 8 months). I still have no definitive answer to why the first lead failed. I may never know as they were not able to remove the failed lead and the new EP doc probably won’t say anything negative about the first guy. I really like the new doc. he has something a lot of surgeons don’t have - empathy for the patient and family.

The next morning a Nurse Practitioner, that I remembered from my initial pacemaker implantation, (I thought she was pretty sharp the first time) came by to evaluate me for discharge. I mentioned that I had been having more skips during exercise and that was what prompted me to have the pacer checked - (that’s when they discovered the lead failure.) I pointed out that I was still having some skips this morning in bed. She thought for a moment then went and got the PM computer and interrogated the PM. She asked if I would want her to try some adjustments with the sensing intervals and/or voltages (I knew what she meant at the time but don’t quite remember the details now).

After making the changes she had me walk up and down the hall while observing the readings on my monitor from the Nurses Station in the hallway. Said things looked good and explained that they try to balance out having the PM work enough but not so much as to shorten the battery life. I don’t really know why the EP nurses that had been doing my regular checkups didn’t try this. Anyway, I hope this works. Now just have to go through the healing process. Have tripled my supplements and protein drinks to hasten it along, but still have to respect the six weeks limitations.

Thanks for all the postings along the way.

Harry