Strange feeling, burst of adenaline, feel bad

Hello All --

I had a Boston Scientific ICD (pace maker and defib combo) installed in February 2014.

Background: 61.......athletic.......ran 1/2 marathon January 2014....lift weight 3 times a week.....run 5k 3 times a week...

2 years ago started having strange heart palpitations but they always came and went quickly....did all the usual heart tests.... nothing abnormal....

October 2012 heart went into ventricular tachycardia....had to go to hospital and got shocked back into rhythm....doctor started me on verapamil

November 2012...verapamil didn't work....VT again....hospital....shock....doctor performed an ablation......on the table for 5 hours heart would not act up....beat as normal....ablation was a failure.... doctor started me taking sotalol......

December 2012.....heart MRI.....heart cath.....nuclear stress test...basically all the heart tests known to man.....nothing......everything is normal.....

skip forward 14 months.......

February 2014......no problems....sotalol has stopped VT for a year......I thought it was behind me........then bam.......VT again.....hospital.....shock...... doctor put in pacemaker/defib.....

Cardiologist said....I don't know what is causing this all we can do now is have the PM/Defib installed to shock you out if it happens again.....

Questions:

Since the PM/Defib was installed I went into VT once.....pacemaker paced it out quickly and have not had one since.....

what is happening now is that for no reason I get a what feels like a fluttering of the heart.....a huge rush of what feels like adrenaline........shortness of breath.......lasting only a few minutes, but enough to put me on the ground until it passes...this used to happen about once every couple of weeks....then once a week....then once every few days......then once a day.....and finally yesterday it happened 6 times.....I went to the ER and of course they found nothing......

#1 Anyone else feeling this???
#2 Is this the pacemaker going off???
#3 Anyone have this happen to them???

Any advice, knowledge, suggestions would be helpful....many thanks.....

3 Comments

Don't know but...

by ChrisD - 2014-05-26 10:05:24

...since it is happening fairly frequently, they should put a 24 hr halter monitor on you and they would know very quickly. I would insist.

Good luck
Chris

similar feeling

by SRL - 2014-05-26 10:05:54

I had my pacemaker placed in 2008. I had hyper thyroid and it did damage to my heart. I had fast and slow heart rates and they had to place my pacemaker and then two days later I had radiation for my thyroid. The radiation was suppose to eliminate the fast heart rate. And it did for many years. In the past 2 years I have been having this similar feeling of fluttering of the heart with a huge rush of what feels like adrenaline which I call my heart feels like it racing fast followed with shortness of breath. Just as your does it only lasts for a few seconds to minutes then passes. They have down numerous test which all come back normal. I recently had a 30 day monitor and Dr said the first week I had some fast heart and he doubled my atenelol. I went last week for rest of results and Dr said u when i was feeling episodes either my pacemaker was kicking in at that time or I have an extra beat in my upper chamber and that was occurring. Neither dangerous but they are still occurring and getting worse to where sometimes I have to sit or lay down when they occur and they always stop me in my tracks. Even at my pacemaker I should not be feeling like that it never has before.

thanks for the comments

by Cartman - 2014-05-29 01:05:49

Update: I went to my cardiologist yesterday. The strange feeling and adrenaline rush was indeed my heart starting to go into V-tach and it was the pacemaker that paced the rapid heart rate back to normal. In essence the pacemaker did its job. Unfortunately this can happen at any time so I pretty much can't do anything. My cardiologist is going to attempt another ablation in the next few weeks. The first one I had was a failure. Hoping this one is a success, I can't live the rest of my life waiting for the next event to happen.

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