pain when breathing/sneezing

Hi everyone,

I've had my PM just over 2 years. No complications. But in the past 48 hours I've had some new pain. I swam 2 days ago (which is normal for me) and when I came home I felt like I had a strained muscle right at my pacemaker site. I took some advil and went to bed. It felt better but now I consistently have a dull ache under the skin at the site of my PM and running down from it and it hurts when I breath in deeply or sneeze or blow my nose. I called the Dr but have yet to hear back. Do you think it's just a strained muscle or something with my leads? How does it feel when you have a lead that has moved or pulled? Thanks!
-Erin

3 Comments

Sounds like

by Theknotguy - 2015-01-15 10:01:45

Sounds like muscle strain. Swimming makes you use muscles you don't normally use and in different ways. Add to that being a little dehydrated, pushing a
little to hard, fighting off a mild flu bug, wrong phase of the moon, whatever - and you end up with a pulled muscle in a spot you hadn't felt before. They can
get really sore and since they're in a spot you aren't aware of, can give you a lot of grief.

If you pull a lead you'll really know it. They hurt like hell and you won't be able to move in the same way that pulled the lead. Not to mention a very sharp
pain in the area where it was pulled. Sounds a lot like a pulled muscle but there is an extra feeling of pulling tightly on a string. That's the only way I can
describe it. A pulled muscle is just sore. A pulled lead feels like a pulled muscle plus the taught string in the middle of it.

Got a lot of pain when I started back at the woodshop. Sure, the physical rehab was good, but they just didn't exercise you the way you do when you go back
to regular working. Mostly it was muscles I hadn't used since before the PM insertion. Rest, Tylenol, warm packs, and cold packs helped.

Hopefully by now you've heard from your EP. Hope everything else is going well for you.

Thank you

by eschade - 2015-01-18 07:01:31

Thanks for the comment Theknotguy. Very helpful.

Similar Feelings

by PJinSC - 2015-01-19 03:01:58

I have had my CRT-P for exactly two years now, and sometimes after strenuous exercise, my implant site burns for a while, especially around the suture scar, then goes back to normal. My personal opinion in that a lot of movement and straining in the area is not so much the leads, which are flexible, but the implant pocket being disturbed by the device moving around irritating the site scar tissue. Remember you have foreign objects in your body, and it doesn't like it. Did you change your swimming routine with a new stroke that put new stress in that area?

You know you're wired when...

You fondly named your implanted buddy.

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