Close to Fainting

go to the ER

by Tracey_E - 2020-08-12 17:31:19

JMHO but I would go to the ER just to be on the safe side. If your heart rate is good, your pacer is working. It's easy to get tunnel vision and blame it for anything that happens on the pacer but lots of things can cause near fainting. I'm not a doctor but pretty sure those can be heart attack symptoms. It's better to go and find out it's something minor than ignore it and be wrong.

Tracey E. is right

by Gotrhythm - 2020-08-12 18:10:00

As Tracey says, there are many causes for you symptoms that have nothing to do with your pacemaker. For instance, I had exactly those symptoms a few weeks ago. As it happened I was at the hospital to get a routine bone scan. I told someone how I was feeling and was rushed to the ED. After lots of tests, it turned out I had dangerously low sodium. It's not the kind of thing anyone could have known without a blood test.

Even if you don't want to go to the ER, a call to you PCP is in order.

Another example...

by AgentX86 - 2020-08-12 21:51:56

I'd been complaining about feeling "faint" (feeling like I was falling forward, sometimes almost a sommersault) one day a month for two years.  My cardiologist and EP had no idea what could be going on so let it slide, until I had a seizure.  Add a neurologist to the contacts list.  He can't figure out why it was one day a month but that day it happened up to two dozen times but the drugs seem to work.

The bottom line is that it had nothing (at least directly) to do with my heart/pacemaker.

Specialism and pacemakers

by Selwyn - 2020-08-14 08:19:45

To know what you don't know, and know then what to do is to truely to know.

It is sad that symptoms such as falling foward, 'obviously' a neurological symptom to any general medical practitioner should merely be dismissed as not heart related. Similarly, fainting ( commonly associated with sweating - a vasovagal symptom, or sympathetic neural overdrive) is a symptom best sorted by a general medical practitioner that can take a more holistic approach. 

Specialist forget their medicine in the round. The value of a GP is breadth and depth when it comes to medical knowledge, and knowing what is prevalent.  I spoke with my  dermatologist a few months ago, he was dreading going back to hospital medicine for the Covid crisis- he told me so. He is an excellent dermatologist who has spent 25 years specialising. The range of problems he sees are bread and butter to him. He told me I should have been referred to him, at his regional centre,  3 years before I had the excellent, and correct,  diagnosis made by him ( so much for reliance on hospital haematologists and surgeons!).

Each to their own.  You should not under estimate the value of a good general medical practitioner.  They can save you a lot of heartache!

Specialists

by AgentX86 - 2020-08-14 17:55:43

The thing that confused my cardiologist (haven't seen my EP since - next week) was that it only happened one day a month and then many times during a 24-hour peiod. It actually the sensation was similar to what i felt during the pauses that earned me the pacemaker award.

My vasular doctor suggested that I record them, so I keep a log on my cell phone of date, time, what I was doing, and what I felt. Amazingly no one, including my Neurologist wanted to see the log. He has no idea how it happened only one day a month. He even asked about phases of the moon! He also said, if I'd been female...