Life With A Pacemaker

It is over, and I am home and recuperating. The good news is that my heart is back in rhythm again. The first time that they shocked it , it went right back into a-fib in a few minutes, so they had to put me out again and shocked my heart another time, and then it stayed in rhythm this time.
The doctor said that if it hadn’t, they couldn’t do it again, so they would have just sent me home the way that I arrived, and I would have had to see what else my cardiologist could do to help me.

I have a follow-up appointment next week with the electrophysiologist, and then one in June with my regular cardiologist, so between the two of them, hopefully we can keep this old ticker working properly.
I can still feel some kind of a gurgle in there now and then, but at least so far, it is in the sinus rhythm.

Thank you again, @Babs Hunt , and everyone else who has been praying for me........ I have been needing those prayers a bunch ! It is good when we all pray for each other.

 

It is not a dangerous procedure, @Frank Sanoica , but it depends on whether it would or would not help your heart situation. Several years ago, I had an ablation procedure, where they scrape your heart to reset the electrical patterns, and that helped it to stay in rhythm and not be in a-fib for quite a while; but eventually, the heart makes the wrong pathways again.
My doctor said that he could not do any more ablations on my heart, after the second one, and that I might need a pacemaker later on.

I was fine for about 2 years, and then over last winter, I started having trouble with my heart going in and out of tachycardia . One minute it would be at 50 bpm, and then it would jump to 150+. At night, or when I was reading in the evenings, it did the opposite, and the bpm would drop down into the 40’s, and then into the 30’s.
When It did that, it scared me, because I was afraid it would just slow down and stop some night, and I though it might be time to look into a pacemaker.

The pacemaker stops the heart from going too slow, but it does not stop it from going too fast, or from going into a-fib. That being said, keeping it from beating too slow also seemed to help stop it from beating too fast.
I thought it was kind of like over-correcting when you are driving a car (and hit ice), so when it went too slow, my heart tried to speed it back up, and just “jumped time” and went into tachycardia .

If any of this sounds like it might help your heart, then by all means, ask your cardiologist about a pacemaker !

 

Here is a screenshot from my iPhone Apple Heart app, that shows from January 8, to February 8. It shows my resting heart rate, and you can see how low it was going, and then when I got the pacemaker around the last part of January, it just leveled that heart rate out and kept is at 60 bpm overnight.

 

This screenshot shows my resting heart rate from April 21 to May 21. You can see it was pretty steady until it went back into a-fib last week. Then is skyrocketed and was high for almost a week, even when I was at rest. This graph only shows resting heartbeat, so my regular beat would have been even more erratic when i was up and about , doing things.
You can see at the end, the last two little dots are now, after having the cardioversion to get my heart out of a-fib.
This Is the thing that I love the most about my Apple Watch and iPhone, is that I can track everything my heart is doing, day and night.

 

Today was my follow up visit with my heart doctor. He explained that after the last time of doing the cardioversion they can’t shock my heart any more. He said that they almost could not get it to stay in sinus rhythm, and if it goes into afib again, then they will be doing what he called a “last-ditch” surgery called AV node ablation.
He explained that it is the top chamber of my heart that goes into afib, and when that happens , then it passes the information through the AV node, and the bottom chambers try to keep up with the top chambers.

What he will do is block my AV node, so the heart does not send signals from the top chambers to the bottom ones, so the heart will be totally controlled by my pacemaker.
Even if the top is in afib, the bottom will still beat regularly, because the pacemaker will be controlling it. He said this will stop the tachycardia episodes, and they can take me off of the amioderone, which is bad for the kidneys, and has other long-term use side-effects.

This is all pretty scary, and I was worried about what happens if the pacemaker malfunctions. He said that should never happen, but if it did, then there is another regulator in the bottom of the heart that would keep it beating, until I can get to an ER and get the pacemaker fixed.
As long as my heart stay in rhythm, then he is not going to do the procedure; but if/when it goes into afib again, he said they would just put me in the hospital and do the AV block at that time.