Pain 5 weeks post PM

Hello,

 I had a PM put in April 23rd, right out of the Cath lab  when meds wore off I had the most God awful pain,  & red hot burning from armpit to elbow and into hand. Thumb, pinky and ring finger were tingling.  Nurse responded "no one has pain from pacemaker- this is really unusual.  Omg I was so upset, I kept telling her I thought it felt like nerve pain because I had an ulnar nerve injury in right arm in 2010. I then had to wait for her to contact doctor to get me something for pain. PA that discharged me following day (Thursday) basically ignored complaints of site pain & arm pain & I was sent home wth instructions to take ibuprofen.

  I had difficulty sleeping that night & the following day I called the Dr. twice for advice or to prescribe something for the intense pain. They didn't return my call, but my family practice Dr. called to check on me, (I had been taken by ambulance from their office Monday, to ER for dizziness & low heart rate & high bp.) I was told to go to ER asap for possible blood clot in left arm. I was checked for clot & cleared, but admitted for left arm pain & elevated blood enzymes.  ER doc even told me I could have possibly sustained heart damage from PM insertion.  Needless to say this scared the heck out of me.  I found out next morning that I didn't have a heart attack & that the enzyme troponin always goes up with a pacemaker insertion. OMG!!!   Why was I back in hospital then? And still no one addressing my nerve & site pain, or at least saying it could be related to PM.

    I've been off work for 5 weeks, & 2 more visits with pace maker doctor & he still acts confused about my pain, which is frustrating. Most recently he prescribed antibiotics for the site pain, stating it could be due to a slight under lying infection.  

   The pain has gotten more tolerable with aleve, but still there. I'm now in therapy for nerve pain, but getting strange feeling in right hand now.  Is this really rare? Or did something go wrong with the procedure?

 

Any advice out there?

Thank You!

Momostwin 

 

2 Comments

Nerve pain following PM insertion.

by Selwyn - 2018-06-11 13:37:03

There are a number of possibilities here.

One possibility is that your old injury ( the ulnar nerve)  could have been stretched by the arm positioning during the procedure. Having symptoms in the thumb is against this idea.

The other possibility is that the nerve roots in the upper part of the chest ( the brachial plexus) may have been inadvertently traumatised during the insertion of the pacing wires, especially if there was any difficulty at the time.  

It is a rare complication of the surgery. It should get better with time, and appears to be doing so. I would expect the physiotherapy to help. 

Clearly, you have had a lot of worry with all of this, and very real symptoms. Count yourself unfortunate. 

Welcome to the Club. Good of you to bring this to everyone's attention.  I haven't tried a seach ( upper right corner) - there may be others with this rare complication. 

Selwyn 

 

Pain following PM insertion

by Harleigh55 - 2018-06-11 21:20:55

I had so much pain the first 48 hours.  It's been two weeks since my insertion and I still have pain and tingling in my left arm.  Last night I had a constant ache in my lower sternum and pain where my loop monitor was inserted one month ago.  My loop monitor is still in.  At my one week checkup the Dr. Acted puzzled by all my pain and said everything is fine and my PM was working 40% of the time, and made no adjustments.  On the most part things are improving and my stamina is better.  I used to get real tired, light headed, nauseated and out of breath before this procedure.  My loop monitor was capturing long frequent pauses prior to getting my PM.  Glad my primary care MD took me off work for 6 weeks.  I hope I'll feel good all the time by then.  I'm a 63 year old nurse.  Good luck

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It may be the first time we've felt a normal heart rhythm in a long time, so of course it seems too fast and too strong.