Ablasion worked great! Sleep apnea misdiagnosis

• by jimkirschvink
• 2012-03-29 02:03:44
• Checkups & Settings
• 1487 views
• 2 comments

Howdy -

I have had a PM for about 5 years now, and never felt as good as I did as before getting the thing. I finally went to a new doctor, who was great! I got the telephone call in thing right away, and she dropped my pulse from 60 to 50. I also got on the treadmill for the first time in 5 years, and she diagnosed heart flutter. I had a simple ablasion proceedure down in Denver, where they stuck a probe up a vein in my crotch, (gulp!) ran it into my right atrium, and burned a line in above my valve. It's been a month, and I'm running again without getting winded! i cut almost 15 minutes of time off of a short loop I run, and today I ran for almost an hour without getting winded. I hiked up to 12,400' last weekend, and felt great.

The funnyest thing was when I was in the hospital and went to the restroom for the first time. I was standing looking in the mirror at myself, with all of these suction cups and wires hanging all over me, in that goofy gown, and realized they shaved my crotch! I couldn't stop laughing for 10 minutes, and almost passed out. If you stay at University Hospital in Denver, order the salmon.

I'm almost certain the previous doctor could have done more to help me out. If you are athletic, and "bonk" out, get on a treadmill. If you get a lot of rapid faint beats, you may have more to get done than just installing a PM.

An interesting side note: My new doctor also diagnosed me with sleep apnea prior to my ablasion, and got me on oxygen at nights. I wore a pulse oxymenter overnight, and was getting episodes into the 70% level, which is dangerous to your organs. I insisted on another pulse oxygen test after the surgury, and I'm glad I did. Apparrently, my O2 level was a result of the poor heart beat from the dysrhythmia, but also: I get pens and neetles when my arm falls asleep when I pinch vessels in my arm during the night. Since my style of sleep has changed to protect my PM, my arm gets into wierd positions,and the O2 level was a result of my arm not getting enough circulation, not because of sleep apnea. One less surgury to worry about.

Take care!

Jim Jim