i want to turn off my pacemaker

i am a 58 year old male..i was a jock when i was a kid..an air force officer (they make you stay fit)..swam a mile a day after i got out of the air force til i got an artificial should in 2010..walked 55 minutes a day after that..and woke up unable to catch my breath one fine night...went into the general practitioner's office the next morning and was found to have a pulse of 30..saw a cardiologist about 5 pm who said i needed a pacemaker and got a 2 lead st jude device the next morning..still felt poorly, that doc took 3 months failing to tell me why, so i fired him..got a new doc who figured out in one visit i was in stage 3 idiopathic heart failure..i have had my heart cathed 4 times including one somewhat painful venous cath...my heart is clean in the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels...clean...as in no plaque.. ..i never smoked..haven't used alcohol since 1983..ate and eat lots of salads..and they still don't know the cause (hence the idiopathic diagnosis) of my heart has losing efficiency..just won the wrong lottery i guess..my ejection fraction was initially low enough for me to have gone on the transplant list..with meds it is 2 points above that threshold..big whoopdedoo..i'm supposed to get a new knee...and now both of my hips pain me on a walk of more than 1/4 mile (supposedly caused by walking with a weird gate due to the knee)..let's see..what else..two hernias repaired last summer and on one side the mesh had come loose..and oh, i know..they found me to be in permanent afib 1 and 1/2 years ago.. .. .. ..so..here's my question..i read about the guy who broke his neck skiing and decided against treatment..i am tired of all of this..my quality of life, is not what i wanted in my late fifties..i hurt all the time (i used to take aspirin for my aches and pains) and the only effective pain meds they have for me since i take the gosh darned pradaxa for afib are narcotic..and i like neither how i feel when i take that mess nor the negative change to digestive efficiency one gets..i generally ache all the time..my knee, my hips and my fake shoulder really ache all the time..i can't use my tens unit for my sore back nor sore shoulder due to the pacemaker.. ..i gasp for air when i climb 2 flights of stairs or attempt to walk a grade of more than 10%.. ..i am tired of this..it ain't gonna improve..i don't like taking up medical resources for a permanent condition.. .. .. .. ..what steps do i take to turn it off and just pass into the dark night as they say..i now have a living will..will that help???

4 Comments

Thanks Cabg Patch

by Moner - 2014-01-16 06:01:04

Hi Cabg Patch,

Thanks for the wonderful post, you really brought it home for me today.

Moner
>^..^<

pacemaker off

by Brenda Price - 2014-01-16 06:01:50

Unsure how you can do this but I do feel it is your decision to make.Most of us struggle just to try and improve what quality of life we have left. My ef was very low for two years but came up gradually and I am now at 45%. This happened over a period of five years

I suggest some counseling, and maybe a second opinion from a cardio doc and if you still want it turned off perhaps your physician can give you some advice.



depression and suicidal ideation

by BillMFl - 2014-01-16 07:01:01

A lot depends on exactly where you are at now. I think we both know that removal of your PM isnt the real issue nor why you posted here. Is this the first time you have spoken out? I am just guessing that you chose to express your self on here because of anonimity. You obviously have some very serious health problems to deal with. And you have every right to be depressed. Do you have family/loved ones? How do you think they would be impacted? Just remember that suicide is permanent. I am hoping that your idealization is recent and that you are not close to acting out. Death by PM removal is not a realistic method. But the fact that you are expressing the thought is just one step away. If you are near to acting on these thoughts please call the suicide prevention center. You can remain anonomous and get some sincere conversation from someone who has probably been right where you are now. They, like myself, will not judge you.

yeah i understand

by jessie - 2014-01-20 09:01:27

but i think that some people get stuck in the depression and are unable to see what is good in our lives. there is i believe always something to make us happy or some wonderful people in our lives. i do believe what helps is to make a list of the good things and look at it every morning. also focus on someone who has it much worse than us and can still smile.that is excellent when like patch says he has an example of that young girl to look back on. maybe it is her husband who makes her smile and that new baby and her faith maybe. in my area many people i knew commited suicide. i also worked for many years with depressed people.they alwasy left a whole in my heart when they deliberately ended their lives and their family suffered immensely.yes some days are very hard. yes i have feelings of being low. everyone does. i work very hard to do my work at home with pride and happiness. i cook great meals with effort but it is something nice to look forward to sitting down with my hubbie of soon 50 years. we make a big celebration of it with flowers on the table and fine china. i use it everyday and enjoy it. i love a cup of tea in fine china. i get up every morning and bathe and wash my hair and look as good as i can. i use creams to lighten the wrinkles. i am very vain about myself but i think that is good.i am 72 and my husband is 73. he is a very sick heart patient but does his best and keeps active. he got the luck of the draw of inheriting eastern european small vessels from his parents. he is chronically occluded and has been told no more can be done.if we could we would but we cant. he got an extra 3 years so far in october from an experiment at sunnybrooke hospital in toronto where they went in to the back of the heart and used collagenese to soften a vessel and the next day went in and did angioplasty and were able to insert a stent and open another line. some days his oxygen goes down very low some days it is 96..this procedure someday will replace bi-pass which is so intrusive. he was one of the guinea pigs so he in fact has helped humanity as it worked in almost all the patients who joined the study. i am told it was also done in arizona. so just some thoughts to hopefully help you.....jessie

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