CareLink Heart server down for maintenance

3rd Degree Heart Block? "When in doubt there is no doubt"

by MartyP - 2019-02-18 17:42:18

So assuming your had / have a 3rd degree heart block, that means your heart stopped beating and if it didn't restart "poof" you are, as they say "history". 

I was lucky, I was in the hospital because I fainted and overnight my heart stopped for 30 seconds at 6 AM - at 10 AM they wheeled me in and Sparky became part of my life for the duration.

This is nothing for fool around with.  If it happened while you were driving - well, you might be lucky and have enough energy to pull over and stop, OR, you might crash into a tree and either hurt yourself or die, OR you could hit a child crossing the street.

SO NOT DALLY - get a super surgeon who has done oodles of PM and get it done.

Just my opinion !!

Marty

Here's what happened to me in May 2017:

So at the time I was a 73 year old male in reasonably good health and this is was first major health “episode”.

On Wednesday May 28, 2017, I fainted dead away at a diner having breakfast with my wife. Ambulance to the emergency room, all kinds of tests on Wednesday and Thursday but nothing showed - I never got to the “tilt table" test. On Friday, May 30th at 6:30 AM in the hospital, the nurse woke me up saying my heart stopped for 31 seconds - 3rd degree heart block, thank God I was in the hospital - I could have killed myself, my wife and may be others - there was NO warning. Four hours later I received my Medtronic’s Dual Chamber PM (now called Sparky).

Carelink monitor

by MartyP - 2019-02-18 17:46:49

It's not the Pacemaker it a "gizmo" that if you don't feel well and are concerned, you put it over the PM and it sends information to Medtronic that is then forwarded to your EP.  The note says it's down for maintenance - every now and then every web site gets taken down for a short period of time for maintenance including Amazon, Airlines, etc. I an and would not be at  concerned.

You might want to read this post from one of our experts - Gotrhythm ...

by MartyP - 2019-02-18 17:56:09

Whoa! Everything you think you know might not be true!!!

by Gotrhythm - 2017-08-20 16:55:58

I'm not trying to sell you on a pacemaker, but whatever you decide should be based on good information. Your post contains two erroneous assumptions which need to be cleared up.

1. Fundamentally your heart has two systems. The pump that is physically moving the blood to your lungs and then around the body, and the on/off electrial system that causes the pump to operate. [Hugely oversimplified but good enough for this discussion*]

It's possible to have trouble with one system but not the other, or both at the same time.

When talking about heart health, most people are talking about the pump. But many of us here have strong, healthy pumps. It's the switch that is faulty. 

A pacemaker is simply a failsafe for the switch. As long as the swich operates when it should, the pacemaker does nothing. If the switch takes too long, the pacemaker takes over and supplies a beat. Then it waits to see if the next beat will come on time. If it does, the pacemaker does nothing. But if the switch takes too long...etc.

That's all a pacemaker is. These days there are lots of bells and whistles, but fundamentally, that's all a pacemaker does. It operates as a failsafe for when the pump fails to switch on as it should.

You can do much to improve the health of the pump, and you have been doing it. But you can do little to make faulty switch operate more reliably. No pills, no diet, no exercise. A little bit unreliable is no improvement over very unreliable, because it lulls you into thinking the problem has gone away.

It hasn't. By and large, electrical problems with the heart do not improve, and, in fact, tend to get worse over time.

Why cardiologists do not explain this, I do not know. It certianly isn't beyond a layman's grasp. I had some of the same mistaken assumptions as you, and I almost waited too late. I could have died, or worse, killed someone else if I passed out while driving.

2. Why on earth do you believe a getting pacemaker means your life is over? What have you read or heard?

There's a lot of bad information out there that's 30-50 years out of date. Today's pacemakers are incredibly reliable, well-shielded from electromagnetic interference, and even MRI safe.

Among our membership we have every age group, and every kind of athlete you can think of. Weight-lifting, cross-fit training, marathon running, swimming--you name it. They all have pacemakers and they don't think their lives are over. They're out there doing what they love, thank you very much.

Do things sometimes go wrong? Yes they do. People whose lives go on without a hitch (and they are the majority) are much less likely to join Pacemaker Club, so what you might read here doesn't paint a true picture of how frequently people encounter problems.

Still, even those who do hit a glitch, like I did, would tell you that the pacemaker has added to the quality of life. It's so much easier to enjoy whatever you're doing--playing ball, having sex, eating, sleeping deeply--when you know whatever you're doing isn't going to make your heart stop.

* you can also have a problem with the autonomic nervous system that isn't caused by the heart at all, but can cause the heart to stop. Sort of like the pump is fine and the switch is fine, but a transformer is down. Everything I said about a pacemaker still applies.