Sinking feeling?

Fitbit

by Lavender - 2023-03-07 22:12:56

Look at your post on fitbits from a while back-not today. Several folks told you that fitbits aren't accurate with pacemakers. Trust your dr. Try not to check your pulse too often. You're dreading it and getting anxious. 

sinking feeling might indicate you are having premature beats or another arrhythmia?

by Gemita - 2023-03-08 04:00:58

Rebecca, you say your resting HR is set to stay above 70 bpm, but has been creeping down from 69 to 68 to 67 this week. You say you are 82 and in good health, exercising 6 days a week.  Both those statements tell me that all is probably well.  

The small drop in heart rate a few beats below the set lower rate limit is quite normal.  I get this all the time, especially in the presence of an irregular arrhythmia, like a premature beat or Atrial Fibrillation.  Even without these premature beats, a few beats fall below the lower rate limit setting is not unusual to see during pacing and doesn't mean that the pacemaker is failing unless any symptoms like breathlessness, dizziness, chest pain, weakness etc. indicate otherwise?  

Our pacemakers generally "always" correctly detect any premature or irregular heart beats that home monitors may frequently miss.  Home monitoring will often report premature beats for instance as missed beats (because they are not strong, steady, efficient beats) and so home monitors may return a much lower heart rate than that "correctly" reported by our pacemaker which rarely misses these premature beats.  After all, the pacemaker's lead tips are placed directly in the heart where they receive a good, strong signal of what our heart is doing at any given time.  With home monitoring equipment positioned on our wrist, arm, finger or around our chest, the heart signals may not always be so clear or accurate, if that makes sense?

However, I know you will still be feeling symptomatic with your irregular heart rhythm causing that "sinking feeling, a feeling of doom", so you could ask your doctors if they could monitor your symptoms with an external holter monitor to see whether your rhythm disturbances need treating?  My doctors are trying to treat some of my arrhythmias with Setting changes to help "overdrive pace the pausing, slowing premature beats" so there may be settings they can adjust to help you to feel more comfortable?  My Medtronic setting that helps with this is called Atrial Preference Pacing, but newer models have Atrial Rate Stabilisation feature.  You could ask whether such features are turned ON in your pacemaker?  Different manufacturers will have similar features, but often under a different description. You could also ask about raising your lower limit to say 75 bpm, but they may not be so keen to do this.  Does that help since I see you keep returning with the same problem?

Sinking feeling

by Renny - 2023-03-17 07:15:11

Is your device set to do a self check?  My crt-d was ser to do a sel check at midnight and I kept waking up to a feeling of doom and as for f my heart had stopped.  When they turned the self check off the feeling stopped.  Hasn't returned.  Started about five years in so I'm not sure if at a device check they turned it on.