Pericarditis...For the third time

Hello everyone!
I would like to ask all of you if you have ever gotten pericarditis? I've had my pacer for a year and a half and in the last 9 months I have gotten pericarditis three times. Even the doctors say this is very uncommon but I can't find anyone to answer me why I keep getting it. I go to a good team of doctors (Cleve Clinic) but I feel sometimes my cardiologist doesn't answer my questions and when he does I can't understand his forgien language, but I do think he is a very good doctor. Sometime I feel like the see so many very bad heart illnesses that to them pericarditis isn't much but to me it's painful and scarey especially since I don't have answers.
Does anyone have any imput for me?
Leisa

2 Comments

pericarditis on honeymoon

by paula07 - 2007-09-21 11:09:12

I got my PM in April, and a month later in May (on my honeymoon) I was diagnosed with pericarditis and had to undergo emergency surgery to drain the fluid from around my heart (not trying to scare you!) they said mine wasn't caused by the PM but they don't know exactly what caused it (they think a virus). Sometimes the wire can puncture your heart, but that would onset quickly after the surgery is what they told me. I had a pericardial window cut in the sac around my heart to continue to drain any excess fluid which will pretty much keep me from getting it again. How have they been treating your pericarditis? I wasn't even given another option other than surgery because the fluid had gotten so high.

How could you and your doctors tell that you had pericarditis? It seems like mine had been gradually building up, but it took forever (or felt like it) for anyone to diagnose it. I think everyone thought my pains were just me getting used to my PM and the surgery recovery.

Keep posted if you find out anything!

Good Luck!

Paula

The frustration of pericariditis

by ela-girl - 2007-09-22 09:09:30

Hi, Leisa!

I had pericarditis back in the fall/winter last year for what seemed like FOREVER. I had my pm implanted a year ago October, and when I went in for my post implant checks, I kept having this nagging feeling something wasn't right. I had this "pain" at the time (didn't help my doctor was out of town due to a family emergency) and another, less experienced doctor kept telling me I was fine and that it was probably just that I was new to a pm and didn't know what it all should feel like. What an idiot! I wanted to scream! She didn't have a pm so how could she say anything. Ugh. Okay--sorry for the rant. Anyways...I was at school teaching one day when I just couldn't breathe anymore because of the pain. I went in to see my EP right away. Turns out...I had pericaridits--and he could even hear it! (which is rare I'm told--I was like a lab rat that day for the other doctors in the office--everyone and their brother was listening to my chest!)

Anyways...weeks later and tons of meds later...it finally went away. The doctor isn't quite sure what first caused the pericaridits because they caught it late but is sure that it was exacerbated from a sinus infection that had gotten into my lungs via drainage. The lining of your lungs is also the same lining that works over towards your heart's lining. The infection traveled towards my heart--something about the pm being a foreign object blah blah blah. I can't quite remember it all right now. It took about 2 months to get rid of the pericarditis.

I was given an anti-inflammatory medicine to take for 5 days and prevacid to take because of the acid the anti-inflam causes. Within two days of taking it, I was feeling all better (could breath without the pain). When I went back for a recheck (a week since being diagnosed) my EP could still hear a faint "squeak" (from the friction rub) and told me to keep an eye on it and call if it got worse (so they can do a echo and an ultrasound). I didn't have further problems, though.

I guess one question for you would be do you tend to get the pericariditis after being sick? That may have something to do with it. The tendency for pericarditis to happen in rather healthy people or healthy young people is a recent viral infection.

Hope you can get to the bottom of your problem! Keep us posted!

ela-girl

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