Heart to heart with my Doc

• by rfassett
• 2015-12-07 04:12:09
• General Posting
• 952 views
• 3 comments

No pun intended really. I had my annual interrogation last Thursday. I have been implanted for 26 months. At my 3 month interrogation, my pace was set at 70 bpm and my rate response was turned on. I felt great. At the first year interrogation my pace was reduced to what I thought was 60 bpm and the rate response turned off. I became cold right away and did not warm up for three months - and even thereafter battled to stay warm. Five months after the inerrogation I had reason to take my pulse and found it to be in the low 50s. I freaked, called the Doc's office, was told to transmit a new reading, received a call back and was told every thing was working exactly like it was suppose to. BTW, the pace was set back and the rate response turned off at the one year interrogation because my projected battery life was down to 3 and a half years.

So at this latest interrogation (Thursday), I went armed with a list of written questions that were to be answered to my satisfaction before I left. Turns out, my rate had been turned down to 50 bpm at the one year interrogation, not 60 like I thought I had been told. Turns out, my upper chamber is doing its own work 55 to 60% of the time. Turns out that my bottom chamber is pacemaker dependent due to the ablation of the AV node (the impetus for the pacemaker implant). Turns out my heart rate was not restricted to whatever the pacer was set at for the last year (what I thought was 60 bpm). (And I was under the mistaken idea that my upper chamber was 100% pacemaker dependent.) (Mentally, that is a very limiting bit of mis-information.) I jumped on the treadmill over the weekend and took my pulse when I was done and it was 93 bpm. I feel like I have been set free.

When the Doc realized the great amount of mis-information I had, he said I should have called when I could not get warm. I told him that I HAD called and was told that everything was working like it was suppose to. He said, when you call, tell them that you want to be seen. I believe the Doc truly felt bad that I had gone a year like I did.

So a word to all of us - do what you have to do to get your Doc to listen. And more - don't leave until you feel that you are all on the same page. It was not that I felt bad as much as I felt trapped. But now I feel great. I am truly pacing at a low of 60 bpm with the upper limit whatever my upper chamber can do. I have not felt that inner cold since the pacer was turned up.

I did not receive a print out of my interrogation a year ago and had I received that, maybe I would have realized that I was set at 50 and not the 60 that I believed and that information could have made a difference. I did receive a print out this time - and I will not leave ever again until I have one.

I know this message has been often stated in this forum - but one more time might help someone else.

Pace on my fellow travelers in this fascinating arena in which we find ourselves.

Ron