Should I be worried or am I just impatient?

What is NORMAL?

by donr - 2016-10-26 08:20:43

Diane:  The answer is a big, resounding "NO!"Let's define a few words first:

Normal:  It happens to darned near everyone.  For instance - the incision hurts.  Of course it does, you've been cut open & sewn up.

Common:  It happens to whole bunches of people.  Maybe 75% of the new hosts.  You kinda feel like crap for a day or two.  Courtesy of the anesthesia, usually.  That's the BAD side.  The GOOD side is all those new hosts who then get up from the temporary malaise & pretty much go back to their normal lives & function.

Not Unusual:  Not as frequently as "Common,"  but probably 25% of the crowd.  You get wheeled out of the hosp, go home feeling pretty good, but not quite what you think you should be feeling.  Turns out that your new little buddy needs some tweaking of its settings to make  you that new person you think you should be.  That's the bad side, again.  The good side is the crowd that gets wheeled out the door, stands up & walks to the car door, goes home & about their business at a slower pace than expected, but functions pretty well  for having been zonked out for an hour or so & having someone grub around in their heart & leave behind half a brick & a scar.

Unusual:  Good side first - Get to hosp door, jump ot of wheelchair, shout to the world - "I feel normal again!" "I'm ready to take on the World - I'll start w/ all the new-born babies."  The bad side is You retch, puke, hurl, vomit, moan, groan & just want to crawl inside a hole & forget the world for a couple days.  You hurt like they cauterized the wound w/ either boiling oil or a red hot poker, read a post by someone on the good side of "Rare," below  & curse the day they were born as insufferable Polyanna's.  Also, I'd include your case - extreme fatigue, weakness, etc.  Be positive - you should find a way out of the forest!

Rare:  Good side - you fight the hosp orderly for control of the wheelchair; YOU want to push it.  You go out the door, jump up & shout:  "C'mon, World, I'm ready for you - Where's Arnold Schwartzenegger?  I'm gonna start BIG."  Stop somewhere for lunch on the way home; run a few errands, Get home & ask where the pipe wrench is - you're gonna fix the plumbing.  The bad side - "Oooooooh, my aching body.  Everything hurts.  All I wanna do is sit & ignore the good side & wish them all sorts of bad things."  Also included in this category is the small group who suffers things like pericardia, infections, swollen sites & blood clots that wreak havoc w/ their recovery; sometimes their PM just refuses to have a setting that will make them feel better & it takes week, months, even years to get anywhere back to normal.

We have some of every group in here.  I won't name names.  You will figure out who they are.  I'll admit it - I was in the good side of rare all three times I went to the OR for PM things.  I was not up to Arnold - maybe Hulk Hogan, though.

Donr

Hilarious

by Diane C - 2016-10-26 08:29:24

Thanks Donr,

Your descriptions are so funny - if nothing else you cheered me up! 

Rate Response

by Figallegro - 2016-10-26 10:58:30

You may want to discuss whether your rate response setting is turned on or off. I felt similar to you and they turned on the rate response which dramatically changed how I felt when starting to walk or exercise.

symptomatic

by Good Dog - 2016-10-26 15:36:49

If as you said; " Before the implant you were O.K. all the time when you were active, but felt really tired when at rest", then it doesn't make sense that the problem is your new PM. You should still feel O.K during exercise with the PM. That should not have changed just, because you have a PM. 

I think as Donr said, you just need to give it a little more time. The same thing happened to me the day after my 2nd battery change back in 1995. I remember it well. I walked at a fast pace around the block and ended-up feeling exactly as you described. I thought I might die! It turns out that it was simply that my body was still recovering, because a couple weeks later I was fine.

Give it a couple weeks and try again! If the problem persists, contact your cardiologist. I'll bet you will be just fine.

Sincerely,

David

worried pacer

by coffeesnoob - 2016-10-26 18:47:19

I had my pacer put in july 28th. Several days after the procedure I went for a walk and felt like I might have a syncope episode which is what the pacer was put in for in the first place. Mine too is to kick in at 60 bpm.  I have had a couple other episodes since then  and was told my pacer didn't kick in and that my heart rate was rapid and that is what the  symptoms were from. I was exercising both times.  So I guess I am just as confused as you are. If my pacer is set to kick in at 60 bpm if my heart drops fast and pauses how long does it take for the pacer to take my heart back to normal. 

Basic PM understanding

by donr - 2016-10-27 15:54:32

The base rate of 60 BPM is a FLOOR, NOT a ceiling.  A PM can only speed up a PM, it cannot slow it down.  So if it races, the PM can do nothing about that.

The PM adjusts your HR to 60 BPM within one beat.  MOF, It does it fasster than that.  The Pm constantly monitors the heart.  As soon as it senses that a beat has NOT occured when expecterd, it sends a signal to it to beat, so it really misses zero beats & you will never know it happened.

The only way you can have a pause is for the PM to fail & that is as rare as you can get.  PM's are that reliable.

Donr

Maybe more percentage of pacing might help

by blessedgrammy - 2016-10-29 00:42:49

I was feeling horrible even though my bp and heart rate was good.  I would feel faint, weak, short of breath and full in the chest all the time.  When I finally was able to get my doctor to look at it he discovered that my regular heart beat would beat along with the paced beats which wouldn't allow my heart to pump properly.  He changed it to have my heart paced 100 % of the time and now I feel back to normal.    He tried a lot of different settings in order to figure it out.  He changed some things and then asked how I was feeling in order to replicate what I was experiencing.  

I hope you get some help soon.  Life is too short to go through it with a poor quality of life.

Blessed grammy