Timing of doctor appointment

I had a pacemeker installed on February 18. At first checkup on February 28 I was told by nurse that my pacemaker was working fine. There is only one, on demand setting which is for it to activate if my beat goes below 40 per minute. In 11 days the pacemeaker did not have to work.

The next appointment is in 3 months but I was told to resume golf and excercising in 2 months.
Should I not have an appointment in 2 months and with the ok then resme golf and excercising?
Thank you

3 Comments

Hi johnny

by IAN MC - 2014-03-01 01:03:16

You don't say why you had a PM fitted , how you felt before and how you feel now .

There are only 2 factors which determine whether or not you should play golf and exercise in 8 weeks time :-

i) is scar tissue firmly holding the leads in place ? and after another 2 months it definitely will be !

ii ) " how you feel" at the time . Assuming that you are feeling good, not getting breathless, not having cardiac pauses etc then the PM settings must be OK and you can play golf and exercise as much as you want to. ( in fact you should be resuming some exercise now )

At your 3 month checkup they may well make minor adjustments to your settings but you don't need wait till then to get the OK . Every hospital, every doctor and every country seem to have different schedules for PM checkups,

Hope you have an uneventful recovery

Ian

Exercising

by golden_snitch - 2014-03-01 02:03:29

Hi!

Totally agree with Ian. And the checkup schedule you got is perfectly normal; at least they'd do it the same here in Germany. It's good to start exercising again BEFORE you go for the 3 month checkup because that way you can already tell your doctor how the exercising goes. He might want to know, if you have any problems, as for instance shortness of breath, heart rate probably not increasing enough or increasing too fast (if you need the pacer's rate response, this could happen). From what you told us, it doesn't sound like you need the pacer a lot, but still, it's good to test the pacer a bit before going for the next checkup.

Wishing you a speedy recovery!

Inga

start careful exercise as soon as

by BillMFl - 2014-03-02 09:03:15

you feel like it. Walking, stationary bike are good gentle ways to start. Avoid lifting or raising arms until doc says ok.

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