Complications

• by Mainer
• 2018-07-25 16:04:54
• General Posting
• 986 views
• 1 comments

I had a bi-ventricular paecemaker  installed in November of 2017.  I am a 58 year old woman who developted essentially CHF as a result of left bundle branch block from a virus (possibly the flu), all leading to an ejection fraction of  30 prior to the pacemaker installation.  What should have been a simple operation on this relatively healthy woman turned into a nightmare.

The morning after the pacemaker installation, I was dressed and waiting for my husband to pick me up when the tech came up to check the pacemaker (Medtronic) function.  I was immediately sent back into surgery as it was discovered that one of the leads had come unattached.  Either during the initial surgery or during that reattachment, my lung was punctured, my heart was punctured and about a week later, a blood clot was discovered at near the scar.  I I had to have a tube inserted to re-inflate my lung because of the pulmonary edema, which was done without adequate local anesthesia ( NEVER have I had so much pain ~ it was excruciating), the blood thinner I was put on for the blood clot caused my heart to leak blood so fast into the pericardial sack that I had to stop the blood thinner so my punctured heart could heal and because I couldn't be on a blood thinner for the blood clot, I was hospitalized again so they could take immediated emergency action if the clot travelled.  All in all, I should have been in the hospital for about 24 hours start to finish and instead was in for 10 days over two different stays.

While the complications were massive, the staff at two different hospitals were terrific, extremely compassionate.  I have two excellent cardiologists , one of them monitoring my ongoing care and one (the electrophysiolgist) who specifically addresses the anything related to the pacemaker specifically who I only need to see about once a year now.  I am in the process of losing about 50 pounds of excess weight and am doing it very slowly but steady and adding some super heart healthy supplements.  As the saying goes, "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger...."  Here's to 20 more years.