Is there a monitor for worry?

When reading our postings/comments, I often wonder how many of us spend precious living moments stressing over cardiac readings, numbers, studies....you get what I mean. The recent Merlin discussion got me wondering again, because I was actually tired by the time I got to the end of all the comments filled with the amount of just even cardiac info some of us have stored in our brains. Technology is great. Without it, I would not be writing this. I just don't want to wake up one day and find.....oops, I missed living because I was always worrying I had no monitor to monitor my Merlin if it should fail so to speak. Where does the line between heart technology and living life begin and end? Seems our needs for heart technology are as varied as our causes for needing it in the first place. I remember back in the dark ages of heart health advice, you heard a lot about the stress of worry being hard on the heart. Keeping that in mind, worry not and have a happy heart week!
hopefulheart

7 Comments

David

by IAN MC - 2016-04-11 01:04:24

I was interested in your post . I have a friend with an ICD

A few weeks ago I suggested that he look at the PM club. He did and said to me how depressing it was and he couldn't imagine why anyone would want to read about other peoples problems.

He had his first shock from his ICD two days ago ,on Saturday evening in the middle of a dinner party . He hadn't a clue what was happening and didn't realise that his implanted device could administer shocks. I asked him what drugs he takes ; all he knew was that one of them begins with the letter " W"

He thinks he has had an ablation.

He is not a stupid person , he is a qualified accountant but he has total faith in his doctors and is not interested in anything medical.

His ignorance really is bliss for him and he thinks that I am really weird in having an active interest in what Drs do to my body.

We are all different and I bet that his lack of knowledge / interest doesn't affect his life-span one bit !

Ian

Ian

by Good Dog - 2016-04-11 01:04:43

Ian,
I hear ya..................I think that my sentiments are the same!
I have a sister that is late for everything and doesn't seem to worry about much of anything. My guess is that she will probably live much longer than I.
I think that for me, worrying has been both a blessing and a curse! Although more of a curse!
I have found that the happiest people don't worry about much of anything. And isn't that the most important thing in life..........to be happy!

'Fraid Not!!!!!!!

by donr - 2016-04-11 03:04:29

No monitor that can detect worry - directly. That's what makes it so insideous. What do they measure to determine a person's mental state? Why BP, HR, Respiration rate of course. They watch you fidgit, look at your eye movement, listen to your speech. Most of them are monitored to determine our heart's condition.

Worry is a miserable situation. Makes the worrier feel miserable. Some sanctimonious do-gooder wants to help & blythely tells them - "Stop worrying & you'll feel better." Like it's something the worrier doesn't already know!

While speaking "Cardio," this is where the physician must treat the patient's head in addition to the heart. the heart is easy to fix when compared to the head. The physician must first determine just how much the patient needs head treatment & deliver just the right amount or the patient starts worrying about something else.

Lemmee give you a f'rinstance: Our #2 daughter was a ER Doc & one night called and asked me to comer to the ER & talk w/ a PM host who had come to see her. He was agitated out of his gourd, to put it mildly. yet she could find nothing wrong w/ him. Except that his HR was sky high & BP was elevated.

She asked me to talk w/ him to see if I could help him out. So we (man, wife & me) chatted for about 30 min while I tried to figure out what was bothering him. I watched the monitor over his shoulder & he was pacing about 100% at over 100 BPM, & obviously agitated.

After talking some history of his situation w/ the PM (He had been paced for all of 90 days & was normally paced about 35% of the time for Brady), I just came out & asked him "What is causing you to be so agitated? Why are you so worried?" He suddenly blurts out "I'm afraid I'll die if my PM stops!".

Now THAT was a "Can do, easy" fix! Thirty min of telling him just what Tracey told another member in a post just a few down from this one, w/ a few more embellishments, I saw his HR drop slowly down to normal & his % pacing drop, also. he & his wife departed, happier than a pair of clams. Here was a man whose head had not been treated by his Cardio.

Go back & review the Merlin threads - look at the number of people who haven't the foggiest notion what the Merlin is supposed to do or how it does it! Look at the number of hosts who haven't been given appropriate head treatment for using that device. While reading some material this AM for another chapter I plan to write for those threads, I found a description about a host who thought the Merlin was spying on him!

We now have 29,000 members - that's a lot of hosts whose heads havenot been treated & they turn to the experts - US!

Donr




Donr

by Good Dog - 2016-04-11 12:04:25

Donr,

I always find your posts to be interesting reading. Some folks get older and wiser and some folks just get older. You seem to be in the former category.

When it comes to worrying, I think that I could write a book. I worry about every little thing. I don't think I have ever been even one second late for any appointment, ever, in my entire life. Talk about anal........Thing is; I often wonder how much of it is learned behavior and how much is genetic? You can change the learned behavior, but good luck with genetic.

I do blame the medical profession much of the time for the lack of information being passed on to patients. However, I do know that isn't always the case. I met a woman last week in a different PM forum that has had a PM for 40 years. I asked her if she still had the original leads. She said no, she thinks she had one or both of them changed, but wasn't sure. So I asked if she had the old ones extracted. She said she didn't know. So I said, well then, maybe you had them left in-place and capped. She said she didn't know. I said to her that with having had the PM for 40 years that she could help others that have had a PM only for a short time. She said "no, I really don't pay much attention to it." Basically, she didn't care. I have to assume that she doesn't worry much!
So who is worse off; I worry about every little thing. She worries about nothing!
Interesting topic!

David

Worrier

by Turkey75 - 2016-04-12 03:04:45

Man I really needed to read this today. I am 40 and I have an ICD for VT. I have had it 6 years. The worrying is a hard thing to deal with. I have good days and bad but for the most part I just go with the flow, however about a month ago I did feel my ICD pace me with 3 thumps. Yes it freaked me out. I went to my DR and sure enough it showed the episode and he said it did what it was suppose to do. He was excited to see how it worked me not so excited. Since then if I feel a flutter or anything I tend to panic and I woke the other night in a full panic attack. I tend to relate to the man in the hospital that was scared to die. I have 2 kids and a wonderful husband and my dream is the all american one to grow old and watch my kids get old etc. I know that the pros outweigh the cons but it is still scary and I feel I stress to much. Wish there was an easy fix for that.

Turkey75

by Good Dog - 2016-04-12 06:04:02

I understand how you feel. It has got to be difficult to be reminded by a shock that you have the ICD. However, the positive way to look at it is to know that really, you don't have to worry. You will go on to live a long life, because of the ICD. If you can stop worrying about it, you will go on to live a "Good" long life. Or should I say a "Better" long life!
I know that it can be difficult, so all we can do is to keep trying!
Sincerely,

David

Worry is ...

by donr - 2016-04-12 10:04:32

...tough! there is no way to kill it w/ a pill. All they do is stall off the misery till their effects wear off. BTDT!

At least you KNOW exactly what is causing you the stress & worry - the ICD & its shocking capability.Actually, if that is the case, you are bordering on a special kind of "Worry," called "Post traumatic Stress Disorder." Can happen easily to ICD-D hosts, since the shock comes at random unpredictable times & it is traumatic as the devil. It happened once, you know it CAN happen again & worst of all, you have zero idea when.

Sounds like your worry is like an onion - it has layers. The worst layer is the fear of the jolt. You have now added to the smelly little beast worry about every little thing that occurs. Now those, you can do something about.

Learn everything you can about what is happening as far as the little perturbations are concerned, They are far ,ore benign than the shocks, So when one of them occurs, you say to yourself "Self, you just had a watchamicalit. Means nothing, just march on."

Learn all you can about the progressive shocking algorithm used by your ICD. How, why & when it does it. The more you understand about it, the less you will fear it. Your body may well give you a precursor warning that it is about to happen. Knowing that, in itself, can ease the blow of it happening. At least your heart responds to the lower energy progressive shocks. For that you can be thankful.

BTW: You are authorized to be stressed over this. It's a pretty common reaction.

If it happens again, or you really get stressed out over it, go out & find a shrink or a Nurse Practitioner who specializes in treating patients w/ PTSD using a technique called EMDR (Eye Movement Desentization & Retraining - or some such combination of words.) That technique works very well (and fast) on sufferers who know the EXACT cause of their affliction.

Donr


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