Limitations for children with pacemakers

My almost 6 year old son has had his epicardial pacemaker for six months. We are still trying to get used to the do's and dont's. Initially we were told he couldn't play dodge ball or basketball during recess, so all he did was swing on the swings every day. Then they studied magnets, in class, so we had him stay away from the magnet table. Now the school is having weekly skating lessons. Not sure how safe that is. Does this ever get easier? Guess I am still mourning his lack of normalcy.

4 Comments

there are alot of sports

by Pacemum - 2014-02-10 04:02:35

Basically you have to be careful with any contact sports like British rugby or your American football. I do not see any reason for not playing basketball. My daughter played this at your sons age when she had her pacemaker in her abdomen and had no issues.

If you son stays in an area with not many other skaters he should be fine with straightforward skating but he needs to stay away from ice hockey style tackles. The school should be able to facilitate this as part of the weekly lessons.

He should be able to do all sorts like athletics, swimming, volleyball. He will have to be careful on some gym equipment or some equipment may have to be avoided which may press on the abdomen.

My daughters pacemaker is now located in the usual adult position and she is one of the best players of dodgeball in her PE class. She is now 13.

Magnets

by Theknotguy - 2014-02-10 10:02:22

The new PM's are a lot more tolerant of magnets, RF (Radio Frequency), and EMF (ElectroMagnetic Fields) than the older ones. If you look around this site you'll see we have people working as electricians, running shortwave radios, working in power plants, and running diesel-electric locomotives. All with minimal problems with their PM's. These are stronger fields than what you will encounter in a normal day-to-day situation.

I've gone through areas where there are broadcasting TV towers with so much RF it will put "waves" on monitor screens. No problem with the PM. I've also taken one of those magnetic name tags with the rare earth magnets and placed it directly over my PM. Once again, no problem with my PM.

So any magnets your son will encounter in either the home or a school situation more than likely will not bother his PM. At the worst case his PM will go into either a test or maintenance mode. All he has to do is back out of the field and the PM goes back to normal mode.

He's probably going to do real well and start doing what young boys do best - give you gray hair. He's got a lot of living to do. Hope he can enjoy it!

Theknotguy

kids

by Tracey_E - 2014-02-10 10:02:42

I don't know much about limitations for paced kids because I didn't get mine until I was an adult, but I can give you a little insight into what it's like to be the kid with the heart condition. It's a lot harder on the parents! What seems a lack of normalcy for you *is* his normal. If it's all you've known, you don't think much of it unless someone points it out to you. Kids just don't think like that- they don't get afraid, they don't worry about the future. Mom and Dad told me God made me special, I didn't think that was a bad thing, just different. Sure, there were times I wish I could have participated but the gym teacher had me keep score instead, but those aren't the memories that stand out now. There were just as many times, esp later in high school, when I didn't want to do something so I may (emphasis on may lol) have milked it a bit to get out of something I didn't want to do. I figure it all balanced out in the end. I grew up happy and well adjusted and look back on my childhood fondly.

My parents were wonderful at focusing on what I could do rather than dwell on what I could not. I was 5 when I was diagnosed, I really don't remember anything much from before. When the cardiologist put his foot down about the skiing and karate lessons, they got me in dance, art, horseback riding. To me it was all fun, I didn't feel deprived or anything like that because I had to stop the more active sports, though I know there must have been some mourning on my parents' part they never let me see it.

Rule of thumb for magnets is 6" so he probably could have done that one as long as he wasn't right on top of it. Magnets don't hurt us, the worst they can do is put the pm in test mode until we get away from it. That means it paces at a steady rate, so it doesn't feel great but it's not dangerous and it's temporary. I took my magnetic ipad case along to an appointment once to see if we could get it to affect it. No affect whatsoever. New pm's are very well shielded and very few things bother us.

I would let him skate. When you fall skating, you don't land anywhere near the pm.

Advice from a paced teenager

by MelissaB - 2014-02-12 10:02:33

Hi, I've had a pacemaker since the day I was born so I'm speaking on own personal experiences. I was always paced and my only limitation as a child for sports was not to exert myself. But I didn't have particular sports I couldn't play, I definitely played basketball. I'm not an expert on magnets but I generally avoided larger magnets but I was fine near smaller magnets. Hope this helps!

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Member Quotes

I had a pacemaker when I was 11. I never once thought I wasn't a 'normal kid' nor was I ever treated differently because of it. I could do everything all my friends were doing; I just happened to have a battery attached to my heart to help it work.