butterflies, dry mouth breathing difficulties.

Hi all,

Since my st Jude dual chamber pm was inserted 4yrs ago I've had random breathing difficulties, but over the week its got progressively worse, I'm not getting a tight chest, throat feels like theres a constant pressure on it, I have a nervous butterfly feeling in my chest, my heart rate monitor app which is normally very accurate is jumping from 50-148bpm but if I take it from my wrist its 62bpm, I went to cardiology they said the pm won't be the cause my pm check was fine, I had 3 episodes of lower pacing but I feel as though I'm just holding it together.

Any ideas?

5 Comments

additional info

by SUPERSTARDJ01 - 2013-09-08 02:09:26

Forgot to mention for 2 days I've had a really dry mouth and feel a shakey.

symptoms

by Tracey_E - 2013-09-08 08:09:34

Dry mouth can be dehydration, side effects of some medications, nerves, or lots of other things.

When counting heart rate, go by what you count manually, not what a machine tells you. The pm will often mess up the count, either missing paced beats or counting pacer spikes as extra beats.

It gets easy to blame everything on the pm and our heart. If the pm checks out, next step is the gp to see if something else is going on.

Atrial Fibrillation?

by PacerRep - 2013-09-08 10:09:14

I can't really comment on your symptoms that can be caused by a lot of things so I would really just be guess.

But when you tell me your having wild swings in your heart rate of 50-150....My first thought is Atrial Fibrillation. If you have that, A-fib will confuse a monitor everytime. Your device will store in it if you've had episodes...and if you have, you need to be on a blood thinner if you are not already.

Pacing to fast

by miller1 - 2013-09-09 06:09:48

Sounds to me that you are sensitive like I am, suggest that they turn the adjustment down. The butterfly feeling is when the pacemaker is firing.

As for the shortness of breathe try getting an echo of the heart to ensure you have no clots on the leads. Greg

Darts played in a pub by...

by donr - 2013-09-09 08:09:28

...a bunch of tipsy, giggling teen-aged girls.

That's what the responses are like to your entire history of posts - all over the place, & none even near the bullseye!

For starters, it would sure be nice to have a complete story of your PM - reasons why you have it, when you got it, what kind it is, your various pacing %'s, etc.

When I look at your entire post/comment history, I'm inclined to go w/ Sparrow's latest suggestion (Anxiety), modified by Tracey's comment on dehydration.

The medics have apparently ruled out anything else.

All of your currently described symptoms CAN be a result of anxiety. Very easily. They can turn on & off pretty fast & for no APPARENT reason - but there is ALWAYS a reason there, buried in your subconscious mind. They also usually turn ON a lot faster then they turn OFF. Just the nature of the way the subconscious works.

The confounding symptom is what you describe as "Butterflies in my chest..." You see, that can describe a multitude of symptoms from PVC's (Premature Ventricular Contractions) - to A-Fib. A-Fib is one of those catch-all things that can cause/describe a multitude of symptoms & troubles. You can make that diagnosis & often not be far off! Witness what Pacer Rep said - A-Fib, but really only a guess - & he's an expert on PM's. Your PM would give you reports on frequent , potential A-Fib episodes. But you did not report that (See, we need the whole story).

Oh, BTW - one small section of all your posts/comments leads me to conclude that it is time to consider anxiety. YOU HAVE & USE a PULSE APP MONITOR! Apparently all the time.

This tells me that you have a fixation on your HR. My advice - take that instrument of the Devil & throw it in a drawer!!!!! You really don't need to be constantly aware of what your HR is - especially when you are looking at 62 as your HR. Why does anyone need to know their HR w/ that sort of precision? Back before such devices, using a wall clock second hand & a finger at the wrist CANNOT give you that precision in the second digit of a pulse. The best it can do is ABOUT multiples of 4 (Count beats in 15 seconds & multiply by 4), unless you hold on & count for a full 60 seconds. All we really need to know for incidental reasons is which decade our HR falls into (60's. 70's 80's, etc).

It's time to go back & read Sparrow's comment carefully - she may have just put a finger on things (Pun definitely intended).

Don

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Today I explained everything to my doctor, he set my lower rate back to 80 and I felt an immediate improvement.