Thanks for being there.

I passed out at dinner on Monday night. Ended up at the ER and was then addmitted for observation and tests. By the end of the day Tuesday, I was scheduled to get a pacemaker Wednesday morning. This was not supposed to happen to me. I am 51 and a runner. I have no health problems. Got a great check up in July and ran a half marathon in October. My resting heart rate was in the 40's. My doctor and was very proud of my accomplishments. Over the last 2 years I lost 80 pounds, dropped my blood sugar back to normal and my cholesterol was 182. Tuesday evening I found this site on my droid and found great comfort in the information here. I got to come home from the hospital on Thanksgiving morning. I was very concered about not being able to run again, but after reading your stories, I see that that shouldn't be a problem. I just met my cardilogist for the first time on Tuesday. He is very old school and doesn't seem to understand how important running is to my daily routine. I will have my first check up on Wednesday next week and I was hoping someone could share with me some details about getting their PM adjusted for a runner. I need to know more about the rate response feature. I see alot of the education needs to come from the patient from what I have read.

6 Comments

Welcome....

by Creaky - 2011-11-25 03:11:46

You will find great information here from folks much more knowledgeable than me. What settings you need and whether you need to have rate response on or not varies for each individual, what your exact problem was, etc.

As background, I was a fit 73 year old that hiked 4-10 miles twice a week in fairly rough mountainous terrain in NH. Did small hikes and gym workouts in between. In the winter snow-shoed and skied 5 or 6 days a week. I'm back to ALMOST full activity. The only disappointment I still have is that I'm limited in upper
body weight training, as I did have a lead fracture after just 8 months and that's what they blamed it on.

Initially, I ignored a few episodes of dizziness over about a year prior to when I started passing out. Ended up with the pm in Sept 2010. It took a few adjustments, but for me what worked was- no rate response, HR settings of 60 and 150 and probably some other more subtle things that I'm not aware of. I'm sure others will chime in with more info.

The main thing is to be persistent about what is important to you to be able to do. You need to keep pressure on for the docs and nurses to pay attention and make it work for you.

Welcome to the board and wish you all the best.

Harry

Runner

by Noelp - 2011-11-25 05:11:13

I had similar experience, came back from run and fainted (on phone to my mother at the time - she didn't notice!). Anyway had monitor in for one year which showed times when heart beats were up to 4 seconds apart so had pacemaker fitted 1 month ago. Back to running almost straight away. Make sure you get tell technicians that you need top setting to be ignored. My top setting is 150 but I push to 160 plus without any effect. Good luck.

Rule number 1

by ElectricFrank - 2011-11-26 01:11:48

Passing out once is not necessarily an indication you have a heart rhythm problem. It can be caused by a number of things some of which may not happen again. I remember once back in my mid 30's that I passed out. It was followed by a case of the flu. In those days the doctor passed it off as transient. Oddly when I actually did develop a 3rd deg block some 50 yrs later I didn't pass out or even become light headed.

The best possibility at this point is wear a monitor for several days to see if anything occurs that indicates a problem. If you need a pacer then it can really make a difference. If not it is just a nuisance and can even make matters worse if not properly adjusted.

Keep in mind that the medical device field is becoming a very large business with attendant pressure on doctors to suggest implants. For a cardiologist to turn down an opportunity to implant a pacemaker is about as likely as a car salesman telling us we really don't need a new car.

frank

we all thought

by biceps72 - 2011-11-26 12:11:16

this wasn't going to happen to us. You sound like you have a classic case of bradycardia. I have been a life long exercise freak, cardio and strength conditioning. Always has a fairly slow heart rate Mds attributed to hard training.

After passing out twice last spring I got a PM 6/6/11.

I did a recumbent bike 2 days after implant and contined doing no impact cardio through the 6 weeks post implant period. 100 days later I am back doing 45-60 minutes of vigorous cardio/day and lifting as much weight for as many reps as I was pre PM. I turned 62 last week.

As advised-- get your PM settings right and you will be better than new!! Thats a fact.

Hello.

by Julian - 2011-11-27 01:11:02

From what I've read and heard from others is that many settings on the pacemaker can be adjusted. There are limits. You should be able to eventually live like before surgery but it will probably take some time, and adjusting pacemaker settings multiple times until you get what works for you. Who knows maybe it will work perfect right out of the box for you. I'm going through this right now, my unit needs some adjusting big time, because of rate response its coming on when it doesn't need to and sometimes I can feel it pace, feels like a tickling in my throat, so that needs to be toned down. It also does a system check at 4:30pm everyday that I can feel, feels like a flutter for a few seconds then stops, that needs to be adjusted. Now if they could adjust others areas of my life that would be great!

Rate Response

by ElectricFrank - 2011-11-27 04:11:10

Have you tried it with RR off? Unless you have a definite sinus pacing problem it really isn't needed and can cause all sorts of problems. RR is not a full substitute for natural pacing. It is a daunting task for the pacer to sense the bodies movement and use it to derive a proper heart rate. The pacer manufacturers are working hard to find better ways to sense the many inputs the natural pacemaker has, but it may be a while.

Theoretically even if RR is ON it will stay out of the way until needed. It does this by comparing its calculated rate with your actual one, and pacing if necessary. The problem is that the rate it calculates isn't necessarily the best but may cause it to conflict with a normal natural beat. That can cause the strange feeling in the throat. My guess is that the out of sync beats cause a return surge in the jugular blood flow to the atrium.

With all this keep in mind that the research on the dynamics of pacing is much more limited in the case of high endurance athletes. The same is true of the experience of the average doctor. There are still doctors out there who don't realize that with heavy physical training the resting HR can be quite low. They immediately jump in to treat "bradycardia". The same is true of breathing rates. More than once I have set off the alarm in the ER when my breathing was down to 4/min.

Bottom line is that there are more and more of us who are way out on a tail of the bell curve. It's up to us to take care of ourselves in the medical system.

frank

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