Two leads, or three?

• by rea
• 2013-06-12 04:06:44
• General Posting
• 931 views
• 0 comments

A friend passed along this heads-up about her father's recent experience. I thought it worth sharing with the Club.
"Pacemaker's are wonderful and amazing, but I have a fresh experience I have to share from my dad -- and I'm sure he was just one of the unlucky 1%! (He's also a lot older than you.) He had a pacemaker put in in March 2012. Within the last several months he declined significantly -- fluid was accumulating in and on his lungs (had to be tapped several times!), he lost a lot of weight; felt so bad that he was about to sign up for hospice -- until he got a new pacemaker last month! What happened was the cardiologist thought the downturn was due to a bad mitral heart valve; when in fact, it seems he should have had a pacemaker with three lead lines instead of two. The irony of it is he initially didn't qualify for the one with three because his heart function wasn't bad enough! I'm confident he was a very rare exception, but in case you ever come across someone who starts exhibiting anything like this, I couldn't go without sharing."