June newbie

Well, happy to still be here. I was having frequent dizziness and occasional slight pinching at the right side of the heart. My PA had me wear the ZIO patch, (an exterior heart monitor), for almost 14 days. A couple days after mailing in the patch for evaluation,  the results came in. 3 times in 8 days my heart had stopped while sleeping. The maximum stoppage was 10.7 seconds. I was called while driving to go to ER, like real soon, and get evaluated. I was admitted within an hour. Observation for 24 hours, and a PM was diagnosed to be implanted.

2 Comments

Welcome

by Selwyn - 2019-07-02 11:37:57

Hi there, good of you to join The Club.

I had a very similar story but without the symptoms. When I saw the print out from the 48 hours of Holter monitoring, I really thought the leads had come off the machine and that is why I had pages of flat lining. Well here we are 10 years later!  I've just swam a mile this morning and will be out tonight ballroom dancing. Your PM is your guarantee that your heart will not stop until the rest of you gives up the ghost, all things being good with your cardiac pathology, otherwise. I have never had anyone notice the bump on my upper chest wall at the swimming baths, only my grand-daughter who seemed to be quite happy to know that her Grandpa was like the Duracell bunny - battery powered. 

( This may not work in the USA/Canada - see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duracell_Bunny )

I now no longer go around with a defibrillator like when I had a few days wait for my PM. I also can sleep knowing I am battery powered in case of emergencies.

I hate it when that happens

by AgentX86 - 2019-07-02 11:47:53

Similar thing happened to me, though my EP and I had been discussing ablate-and-pace for some time, so I wasn't freaked out about the whole deal.

I was admitted to the hospital because of a near syncope episode while on a Skype with our kids and grandchildren. While in the hospital, they missed one five second asystole because they wrote it off to equipment failure (sleeping on the EKG leads). They sent me home with a cardiac monitor to wear for a month. The second night, at 3:00AM I got a call from the monitoring service telling me to get to the ER. I'd had an eight second systole. I didn't go to the ER because I had an appointment with my EP at 9:00 anyway but we went to the hospital and waited it out there.  Before getting to the hospital,  my heart stopped again. I remember thinking "WTF DO I DO NOW!".

You know you're wired when...

You can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.

Member Quotes

I am a competitive cyclist with a pacemaker!