Another Newbie

• by Ozrkchic
• 2017-02-22 03:52:35
• General Posting
• 934 views
• 0 comments

Hi Everyone!!! I first joined the Zipper Club in 1969 at the tender age of 12 then joined the PaceMaker Club in 2015 at the tender age of 57. I am a CHD (congenital heart defect) Warrior born with Tetralogy of Fallot. The doctors found a murmur prior to me starting school and said I had a hole in my heart but I would outgrow it. HA!!

Not only did I NOT outgrow it, the Ventricular Septal Defect (hole) kept getting larger. In 1968, when it was finally decided that I needed to have that hole repaired, it was the size of a quarter. So on June 3rd, 1969 I had my first Open-Heart surgery to repair the TOF. The doctors said that I would be lucky to live another year without the surgery and that IF I lived to be 20 I would have the heart of a 60 y/o. This particular surgery was still pretty experimental in pediatrics at that time but the doctors said I should have 30 good years with those repairs.

Fast forward 41 years to 2010 and I had to have my pulmonary valve replaced. So God blessed me with more than 30 years before another procedure. Then in 2011 I started experiencing episodes of A-fib and had to have an ablation done. Things went pretty smoothly until December 12th, 2014, when I experienced a horrible episode of V-Tach. I was able to call 911 and after the ambulance got there and did an EKG, the paramedics said they needed to cardiovert me. They gave me some nasal spray to supposedly ease the pain from the shock. Oh boy did that ever NOT help. I have never in my life experienced such pain and I though labor pain was bad. So in 2014 I had my first ICD implanted.

In November 2016, I started having chest pain that was not easing no matter what I did. So I went to the emergency room to get checked out. I had already been scheduled to have my ICD replaced in December but it got moved up as an emergency. Go figure. My original one was a Biotronik and one of the leads had begun to deteriorate already. Now I have a Boston Scientific. The only problem is that one lead stimilates my phrenic nerve causing it to jump so that lead has to stay turned off.  So now I get to go in and have that lead tweeked or replaced. Oh well. It could be worse, I could be living in the years before they were invented. And this is all just a part of my very complicated medical history lol.

I am also diabetic, have only one thyroid lobe which is atrophied to almost non-existence, have neuropathy, and the list goes on but I refuse to bore you with all that. I do have days that it's very difficult to be positive because of the pain but even on those days I try to find one positive and focus on that. Life goes on, I can either choose to give up and waste it feeling sorry for myself or I can look for a bright spot to focus on and live. I choose to LIVE!!! I hope you all have a wonderful day. Love and hugs. And I hope I haven't bored you to tears.