Concerned

Mu husband had a pacemaker fitted a year ago, diagnosed with 2nddegree heart block 34 pulse. Just been for his check up, was told that his signal was only getting through to the bottom of his heart 20%, so this is why he needs a pm, so he is using it 80% of the time, as he is an anxious person but also wants to know everything about it, he wants to know if he would be dead without the pm, on his notes it says not pacemaker dependant, he is confused, or is it about quality of your life

5 Comments

wow

by gordy - 2014-12-18 08:12:13

I am also a wife on my husbands account he has been poorly since getting his fitted in march I think he needs antidepressants but he wont go to docs x

dependency

by Tracey_E - 2014-12-18 09:12:02

Dependency is just a word. Almost no one is dependent to the point they would die without it. It's extremely rare to not have some sort of underlying rate. Without it, he would feel like he did before he got it. Not good, but certainly not in immediate danger.

They don't just stop so it's not an issue. Failure rate is virtually zero. Worst case if they malfunctioned, which also does not happen, they'd go into test mode and pace at a steady rate of 60. Again, it wouldn't feel good but he would be safe.

These are high tech computers, much more dependable than our wonky hearts. He can trust it. It takes time to learn that, but trust will come. For me, once I healed and was able to be active again, I thought about it less and less.

His pacing percentage sounds about right for 2nd degree. I have 3rd degree and pace every beat. It sounds a lot worse than it is. Information is his friend. It also helped me a lot to learn about my condition and my pacer. St Judes website has great animations explaining heart block and how the pacer works
http://health.sjm.com/arrhythmia-answers/videos-and-animations
(link fixed, always check what's on the clipboard before posting!)

Another 3rd degree block here

by SaraTB - 2014-12-18 12:12:57

It's smart of him to want to find out as much about his condition and the pacemaker as possible: educating myself (with the helpful folk here, included) was the biggest thing I did to get my head around having a pacemaker. Like Tracey, I'm paced every beat, but I live a normal, active life, with no restrictions or medications necessary. I know that pacemaker will keep me going. As was said above, most of us with heart block have an escape rhythm, which means that even IF the pacemaker wasn't pacing us (very, very unlikely) we still have a beat, albeit slow: plenty to keep us alive and reaching a doctor. My doctor demonstrated this to me, by turning off the pacemaker during a checkup, and it was unpleasant but reassuring! So, while I am technically labelled in my notes as 'PM dependent' - I'll survive if it failed (which I'm confident it won't).

If you can, encourage him to bring his questions to this forum: it's friendly, supportive, incredibly informative and there's an amazing knowledge base among the members.
Welcome to the PM Club.

Thanks from concerned

by kim123 - 2014-12-19 06:12:21

Hi thanks for your comments, he gets anxious when he has a check up, which is now done for another year, but we get confused as you are told different things from different medical people, ie when the implant was put in a year ago, the hospital told him he had definitely not had a heart attack, when he had his check up, the technician said you can not rule out that he had a heart attack, it's a lot of ifs, buts, and maybes

heart attack

by Tracey_E - 2014-12-19 08:12:43

The technician is clueless. His job is to check the pm, and it sounds like that's all he knows. Yes, people can have heart attacks and not know it but it's unlikely in your husband's case. If he was 70 with a laundry list of other health problems, then the odds would be higher. Heart attacks are completely unrelated to electrical issues. We have electrical blockages which usually means we have a perfectly normal and structurally healthy heart with a short circuit. Heart attacks happen from plumbing problems, arteries get blocked then part of the heart dies from lack of blood. Two very different problems, completely unrelated. And having electrical problems does not increase our risk of a heart attack.

In my case and I think a lot of other younger people here, I think having the pm decreases my chances of a heart attack because 1) I'm diligent about check ups, most people my age do not have regular heart work ups and 2) I'm careful to eat well and exercise. I've spent too many hours in cardiologist waiting rooms and the cardiac floor of the hospital where I saw the effect of not taking care of yourself up close and personal. No thanks! My problems are a fluke, I'll do everything in my power to avoid the preventable ones.

The first thing they do in the hospital with anything cardiac is enzyme levels that tell them if we've had a heart attack. If the hospital said he didn't have one, that's who I'd believe.

Electrical problems can happen from some medications or infection, other heart surgeries, but most often they happen at random in perfectly healthy people and we have no idea why.

You know you're wired when...

You trust technology more than your heart.

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