First Pacemaker Check

• by TRL28
• 2012-11-08 06:11:32
• Checkups & Settings
• 1161 views
• 1 comments

Hello Everyone! Had my first pacemaker check four weeks after it was placed due to me having sensations of the electrical current and the leads still look good :) They did do some adjustments to my settings... turn down the voltage in both leads and raised my max rate to 160.

I have been having some issues with shortness of breath with minimal activity and several recorded events of Atrial Flutter or Tach so they had me walk up and down several flights of stairs to see if I would develop the symptoms, which I did pretty quickly. When they hooked me back up I was in Atrial Tach which resolved rather quickly at rest. They then sent me for a Tredmill Stress test to see in full, what was going on. Within a couple of minutes my heartrate hit the max rate of 160 which in turn activated my pacer to switch modes and my ventricle rate dropped abruptly to 80. They feel this is what causes me to feel so rough so they turned the rate response functionality on to hopefully help the ventricle rate not to drop so drastically when the pacer switches "mode." He also put me on Verapamil sr 120 mg to help with my atrial rate raising so quickly.

I'm not sure if the atrial tachycardia is due to the recent events of the ablation, which caused me to go into CHB and then the pacemaker placement or something i've always had and just didn't realize it. Ugh, i'm so done with all of this :(

On a brighter note, I'm so pleased with my EP even though I have to drive 2 hrs to see him. My appointment was at 11:30 and I didn't leave his office till 1:45. I was actually scheduled to see his nurse practitioner but when he seen my rhythms he took over and didn't allow for me to leave until we got all of this semi-figured out! The pacer nurses even skipped lunch and stayed with me through my stress test and all! As a nurse I see alot of physicians just go through the motions and not really listen the their patients so it was really nice to know he truely does care, along with his nurses! Thanks again for everyone on here, you've all been a true blessing in helping me get through this <3 I just hope the verapamil helps, along with the rate response. I haven't heard much good about the rate response functionality but they reassured me it should only be utilized when I meet my max rate.