Introduction-Hello

• by wjbettis
• 2015-09-11 03:09:13
• General Posting
• 905 views
• 1 comments

My life changed forever on July 14 2015.

Sitting at my desk after lunch which was a burger, fries and a beer ( I don't normally drink at lunch but a friend stopped by) and all of a sudden it felt like basketball was being played in my chest by pounding or dribbling. I took my pulse by a handheld EKG app on my iPhone and my heart rate was 227. I tried to calm myself by breathing, closing my eyes etc with no success. I asked for a ride to an emergency room when I arrived 40-min later my heart rate was 225. Shortly after my heart rate started to slow by itself with no intervention except an IV.

A EP study concluded I have a bad nerve ( my terminology not theirs) in my left ventricle when activated goes to 250. A heart MRI showed to much scaring for ablation therefore I now have Mectronic ICD Evera XT DR (implanted 8/5/2015 I'm being paced at 60 bpm till my follow up in November. My normal resting HR was 50-60. I've been shocked once (again after a pizza and a beer) when my HR went from 60 to 250 in seconds. They've since reset my upper limit to 273 from 250 so there's room for therapy-pacing.

Earlier this year I had already completed 2-half marathons and not to long ago a Ironman 70.3.

The cardiologist who took me on as a patient while I was in the emergency room ( who also did the EP and Implant) thought I might have been misdiagnosed when almost a year earlier during an annual stress EKG which I passed the exercise portion perfectly at a max 14:30 but in recovery I had NSVT but when he looked at the results thought they were VT's. Also at times 50% of my heart beats were PVC's when I wore a hotter monitor.

So here I am 5+ weeks after implanted trying to get my life back. I am planning on doing more Ironman and running events soon.

Any encouragement, articles etc you can point me to would be greatly appreciated.

Jon