Are flutters normal when you are new with a pacer?

I noticed that I had a bit of a "flutter" then kind of a dizziness and then back to normal. I was laying on the couch watching TV. I have been so tired since I got home from the hospital, yesterday, surgery was 1 day ago, so maybe all this fatigue is not helping as well. I took my BP and it was pretty high, 197/93, then I took it again, a little lower then I had to eat dinner and then took it, 140/72, so I don't know if my BP had anything to do with it. My BP in the hospital was pretty low, 110/65. No issues with sinus rhythm going out of whack, but they had stopped some of the sotolol, and now I am back on it since getting home, I wonder about it, because it caused such a slow heart rate, and that is why I had to have the pacer. Is it normal to have these "flutters" with a pacemaker? How do you know if your pacemaker has fired? The instructions say if your heart goes into afib for more than 3 minutes then seek medical attention. I am all new to this. I will begin Coumadin on Monday, they had to take me off in the hospital cause I needed the pacer.

5 Comments

All sorts of feelings

by Theknotguy - 2014-03-19 08:03:39

You'll have all sorts of feelings while your body goes through adjustment to the pacemaker. You'll have feelings from the incision. Then you'll have feelings due to the pacemaker changing your heart rhythm.

Because of the higher voltage of the PM I could fee it when it initiated a heartbeat. So I'd go into coughing spells because I wasn't expecting a heart beat when it did happen.

You can also get PAC's and PVC's. Premature Atrial/Ventricular Contractions. They can feel like extra heart beats. Not dangerous, just annoying.

Unless you're one of those people who have extra nerve endings in their arteries (like me) you probably won't be able to feel the PM when it initiates a heart beat. You can purchase a pulse/ox meter at drug stores in the United States. They aren't that expensive. Aren't always that accurate but they can give you a reading on your pulse. So a pulse/ox will show you what your heart rate is with the PM. They usually have your PM set to a minimum rate - either 50 or 60.

Hang in there. Life does get better.

Theknotguy

3 minutes?

by Duke999 - 2014-03-19 09:03:35

3 minutes in Afib is a short time. If that's the criteria, you will be going to the hospital or seek medical attention quite a lot. People can be in Afib for hours or even days. Regarding "flutter", If I'm not mistaken, you mean atrial flutter?

Is it normal to have atrial flutters with pacemaker?
My answer is Yes, you can have any and all kinds of arrhythmia with pacemaker. (PVC,PAC,atrial flutters, skipped beats, AFib, irregular heart beats, etc.)

A lot more to learn and experience ahead. I wish you well on this new journey.

Duke

The Beginning is a Pain

by NiceNiecey - 2014-03-19 09:03:54

Welcome to the Club, Marnid.

Hopefully, you're going to see your cardiologist soon for a follow-up since you got your PM. The word "flutter" is concerning because of a condition called "Atrial Flutter" which is not good. Atrial Fibrillation (Afib) isn't good either.

I had never had high BP in my entire life until the day I walked into the ER - the day before I received my PM. In fact, it had been quite low for many years (90/60 wasn't unusual).

Your doctor will need to tweek your PM as well as your medications. In the meantime, however, please call your physician immediately (or go the ER) if you have anything seriously troubling before your appointment.

I was told everything should immediately be fine with me (I'm 55, healthy and active) and I had no restrictions other than the arm stuff. So I tried to carry on as though it was business as usual. Unfortunately, it wasn't. I, too, was exhausted and literally fell asleep nearly every time I sat down. And my heart would literally FLOP in my chest, which was very disconcerting.

If you call your doctor's office and they ask anything foolish, like, "Do you think you're in Afib or Aflutter?" Remind them that you're brand new and don't have a clue.

Things will definitely improve. Just give yourself a few weeks to adjust and make sure to call if you're worried about all the new sensations. Some of those should be expected but not necessarily all of them.

All the best,
Niecey

All is well

by marnid - 2014-03-20 03:03:10

What I had was a panic attack. The pacemaker did not even go off according to the Medtronic guy It will take a while to get used to it, thanks so much for all your help

Host sensed vs ECG sensed

by donr - 2014-03-20 08:03:50

Welcome to the club of newbies! You are enjoying a very common problem - how to describe to a pro what an amateur feels.

All these arrhythmias have a very distinct pattern on an ECG that has earned them names. Names that to a Pro who has never experienced them in real life conjure up visions of a very nice bunch of squiggles on a screen or piece of paper.

Unfortunately, to one who has never seen that bunch of squiggles. a descriptive term must be provided when discussing w/ said-same pros.

Unfortunately, some physical descriptions nowhere near describe what the squiggles look like.

Until the patient is sitting there attached to an ECG machine and experiences an event that is identified by the Pro, they cannot be even remotely correctly identified. Alternatively, a whole bunch of some rhythm pattern recorded by your PM & reported out on a download report can identify the patterns for you.

None of us ever stop & ask one of the Pros in our Cardio's office what A-Fib feels like; or what a PVC feels like when told something about them during an orientation.

So something happens, we describe it as we think about it & the office Pro gets descriptions like "Flutters, Flip-Flops, Skipped a beat, Jumps around, Leaped up to my throat, Turned Over, etc, etc, etc." Said Pro gets all flustered because we cannot give them a diagnosis for what we felt.

It's all in the learning through experience.

Once upon a time in the late summer of 1945, a US Army airplane, a C-47 transport plane, flew very low into a truly hidden, unknown valley on the Island of New Guinea. This valley was home to several thousand aboriginal people who had never seen an airplane before. Unfortunately, due to some poor piloting skills & crappy judgment by the same pilot, the C-47 crashed at the end of the valley, killing all aboard except 4 passengers.

Finally, after better than a month, the plane was located - by another plane - and a rescue effort was successfully staged to get the survivors out. It included a parachute landing by a small team of volunteers & a final extraction by glider snatched from the floor of the valley by another C-47.

Consider how difficult it was for those aborigines to describe all that transpired during that entire event when their language had NONE of the words necessary to describe what clothing was - since they ran around stark naked all the time & the most advanced tool they used was a crude stone or wooden stake attached to a long handle as a hoe in their gardens, No metals, no cloth, no healthcare beyond medicine men, no weapons beyond stone -tipped spears, parachutes (You kidding),

Welcome to Shangri-La, as the valley came to be named in the US press. Newbies to PM hosting suffer from the same naivete as those aborigines.

Donr

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