newbie

Hello, I'm 43, athletic, been a personal trainer for more than 15 years and healthy..I thought? Its a month today that my life changed. I had a PM installed due to Bradycardia. I haven't yet been cleared to work or workout, my concerns are there going to be limitations to my workouts. My workouts keep me sane! Opinions and thoughts.

8 Comments

Actually in good shape

by Theknotguy - 2014-03-05 11:03:33

Actually you're in good shape. Probably don't feel that way, but you are.

You have the standard 4 to 6 weeks where you can't raise the elbow above the shoulder on the PM side. Can't lift more than 8 to 10 pounds with arm on PM side. Should keep the arm moving so it won't get stiff. That stuff.

Being a personal trainer, you understand muscles and muscle movement. That's a great asset because you know what and how muscles are affected. Also how much to push and when not to push your body. Tremendous assets.

Since you have a PM, you'll be able to relate to others who have PM's and can adjust training to help people with PM's. The trainers with whom I'm working haven't got a clue about how the PM affects you and are reluctant to help.

I was pretty beat up from the CPR. Broken rib, cracked rib, collapsed lung, chest tube wound, and busted shoulder. One of the nurses in my cardio unit suggested I go through physical therapy on my shoulder. I started about half way through my cardio therapy.

I came from the "No pain, no gain!" era. But the new PT trainers had me do exercises that didn't give me any pain. They told me if I had pain they hadn't done their job correctly. So the exercises were to strengthen without causing pain.

Within a couple of weeks I made great progress in both the physical therapy and surprisingly, the cardio therapy. The PT helped with the breathing, breathing helped with the cardio. I wouldn't have been able to make that progress without the PT trainers help. Oh, and the PT therapy has gotten rid of the pain in my shoulder. It's been 50 years since I was able to raise my arm straight over my head. Quite an accomplishment with the help of some PT therapy.

So I feel with your past knowledge, plus the new experiences, you'll be an awesome personal trainer who can specialize in helping cardio patients after they get out of cardio rehab. Don't know where you live, but I'd be looking you up if you lived in my area.

Hope the PM is able to help your heart problems. Looks like you've got an exciting future.

Theknotguy

Rate response needed?

by golden_snitch - 2014-03-06 03:03:11

Hi!

Did you have bradycardia at rest only or also when you exercised (chronotopic incompetence)? And is this a sinus bradycardia or one caused by a heart block?

Just asking because if it's sinus brady, and you had it when you exercised, you will need the pacemaker's rate response function from now on. Might take a while to finetune this feature, and depending on the pacemaker model you have, it might also limit the sports you can do. That has to do with the rate response sensor, different manufacturers use different sensors, and not every sensor is good for every sport.

Can give you some more information on this, if you let me know whether you'll need the rate response or not.

Best wishes

Inga

Brady at rest

by jdeezel - 2014-03-06 08:03:13

Thank you for all the comments on my topic, its really helping me make some sense of all this. My EKG showed that my RHR was 40 and below, and stopped from time to time for 3-6 seconds. I had fainting spells in my past, but my recent spells happened twice in one day. I have no problems during exertion HR 170. Heart is healthy, valves fine no blockage. And with this PM I sometimes feel my heart beat, if that makes any sense? I also feel what feels like shocks in pectorial and they're not spasms?

Hope you only had brady at rest

by BillMFl - 2014-03-06 08:03:21

That was my case. 6 months after my first implant I was doing whatever I wanted. My HR was always slow to rise very high but like you I was a high functioning athlete. Slightly enlarged athlete's heart, slight thickening of the heart muscle, 70% ejection fraction (as per both angiogram and ultra sound). On the treadmill stress test I would be running flat out on the step incline when the cardio would say ok you can stop now. Six months after implant I was hiking 12 to 13000 ft peaks in Jackson, Yellowstone and Glacier NP. Absolutely no limitations except with weight training. Used to have a complete Wieder Olympic gym in my house. Dumbell rack up to 40lbs. Lat machine. Flat and incline benches, leg extension, etc. I easily pressed my own weight and then some. Sold it all. Was getting older and the elbows and shoulders were starting to creak anyway. And I was hitting 60 at the time! At your age and fitness the only thing holding you back will be some caution at first until you fully heal. I started raising my arm carefully as soon as the stitches were out. Very gently of course. But you don't want to loose range of motion. There is plenty of slack in the leads but until the scar tissue gets well established in the heart you want to avoid any fast herky jerky and heavy stuff. In 6 months you won't hardly remember its there.

electrical problems

by Tracey_E - 2014-03-06 10:03:50

As you've learned, the heart's electrical system can go wonky when the heart itself is healthy, when we are active and doing all the right things to take care of ourselves. Nothing you did caused it, nothing you might have done differently could have prevented it. Healthy living prevents plumbing problems, keeps the arteries clear and the muscles strong. This is a short circuit. Electrical problems just happen. Sometimes some medications or infections can cause it but more often than not we don't know what the cause. Fortunately, the fix is fairly simple and the pm can give us a perfectly normal life.

If it's been a month, you should be able to get back to some exercise. You'll need to wait another couple of weeks for heavy lifting or anything vigorously moving the left arm, but other than that if you feel ok, go for it. Long term, most of us find this is not life-changing, merely a bump in the road.

I'd ask the dr about the shocks. We feel all sorts of strange sensations during healing as the nerves knit back together, but not generally shocks. The impulse that the pm puts out to make the heart beat is very small and it's rare to feel it. It simply mimics the signal our SA or AV node should be making. The muscle responds by contracting, that's what we feel as our heart beat.

sound ready

by wjs1954 - 2014-03-07 11:03:28

sounds like me; well
you are 16 years younger
a personal trainer
in better shape

ok not like me.

But I agree with the others, you should be able to a bit, just not to much with the upper body or at least the pacemaker side.

...good luck...

Similar story

by Stark - 2014-03-09 03:03:30

I'm 36 and do CrossFit 4-5 days a week. My bradycardia episodes occurred while at rest and included two incidents of flatlining for up to ten seconds. I returned to CrossFit a week and a half ago 7 weeks after my PM install.

I would say to keep an open dialogue with your cardiologist about your concerns. Your situation sounds very similar to mine. For me personally, I'm not having any serious issues. Clean and jerks made my incision site uncomfortable at first, but have gotten better. I wouldn't call my sensations "shocks", but I've felt like someone was pressing the hard side of Velcro into my incision area.

I just had to accept that I would need to scale my WODs until I'm fully recovered.

Also, I second all that TracyE wrote above.

Feeling your heartbeat

by Jun - 2014-03-10 10:03:02

I know exactly what you mean! I actually called the doctor and asked if it was normal to feel such a strong heartbeat and of course, all was good. It never goes away either, just takes a while to get used to.
I had my PM put in 9 months ago and I was 43 when it happened. I also am extremely active with running, swimming and weight training being a big part of my life. The best thing I did post surgery was hike like a madman to keep me sane. Incredibly difficult and scary at first but it made me happy. I eventually went back to my same workout routine after a little trial and error with my max heart rate settings. Make sure you are vocal about your activity rate early on so they don't set your max rate too low. Remember, the docs and techs are used to a more elderly less strenuous patient so they tend to set it to a lower rate. Just today, I had the tech raise my max to 165, which I think is still slightly low but better then the original 145 and then 155. Good luck!

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But I think it will make me feel a lot better. My stamina to walk is already better, even right after surgery. They had me walk all around the floor before they would release me. I did so without being exhausted and winded the way I had been.