hi everyone

Haven't been here in eons it seems! I have been doing great since open heart surgery in March of this year for a maze procedure for afib. I've had my pm since last year for SSS and was until Monday completely off blood thinner and heart meds. On Monday of this week I went in for cataract surgery everything was a go, they'd gooped my eye and got to the operating room then when they gave me the sedative, a versed and fentanyl combination, my heart rate went crazy as high as about 150-160 then back down to normal then into arrhythmia etc. I spent the rest of the day in the ER with them trying to figure out what was going on. at first they thought it was a PM malfunction until the pacer rep came in and said it wasn't that the PM was performing as programed. they ended up putting me on diltazilam which i'm not sure if it's doing any good or not and reprogrammed my PM slightly. They ended up thinking that i'd had some kind of medication reaction and went into a-tach and then my pacer kept trying to pace it or keep up with it maybe that I was exercising or something?? i'm still doing ok and have cataract surgery rescheduled for the 14th and 23rd of December and am supposed to follow up with EP. Still really have no clue as to what really happened and why?? any Ideas?? no real symptoms other than just a fast heart rate that day although i'm sometimes feeling a lot of pounding at night but rate is still normal. I really don't want a repeat episode when I go back in December. I scared them silly, although believe it or not I wasn't too alarmed at the whole thing.
(ps 11/21/2015) I went back to look at this post and realized that somehow it got posted in batteries and leads?? what the heck was I thinking LOL--now corrected to gen posting.

2 Comments

Any ideas?

by kmom - 2015-11-15 01:11:46

as to what might have set off this a-tach??Called my Ep's office for follow up and they're not sure what's going on they were going to look into it and get back to me as to what they were going to do and whether I needed to be seen or not. I had a reg scheduled apt with the surgeon who operated on me in March, he didn't say much as to what he thought other than he didn't think my EP was going to agree with what the ER docs said and dxed and wasn't thrilled that they put me on the diltazalam and that my EP would probably not agree with that either. still really no indications if it was a true med reaction or something else. I did however see the ambulance bill that was sent to my insurance co. and the initial dx on that was anaphalectic shock what??? that's crazy. I also had a reg scheduled follow up with my GP for something else (already scheduled --I work full time doing AEP and when I had to take a few days off I had to cram every thing in those 2 days ha) and he had no answers either except it was probably a med reaction and said they'd need to use something else.

update

by kmom - 2015-11-22 04:11:29

Saw my EP's office yesterday, apparently even though the afib is completely gone i'm now going into a-tach and aflutter once again! so back on the propafenone and hopefully this will all calm down by the 14th of Dec when I go once again to have cataract surgery. and apparently it's not an isolated incident when they gave me the meds either.

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