Posted 1/3/2015 4:54 AM (GMT 0)
Hey everyone. I am 30 years old and I have a dual lead St Jude pacemaker. I guess I should start from the beginning. In January of 2014, I started having a lot of issues. Constantly high heart rate, palpitations, dizziness, shortness of breath, headache and extreme fatigue. I could not walk 5 feet without my heart racing. After a few wrong doctors, I was finally referred to an electrophysiologist. By this time, it was April. She did a stress test, which I could not finish because y heart rate got to over 200 and I was gasping for breath. She also put me on a 30 day event monitor. When I got the results from it, she diagnosed me with inappropriate sinus tachycardia. The lowest my heart was during the 30 days was around 130. I had already been put on 75 mg of metoprolol. It did nothing. After a long discussion, my dr told me that I needed an ablation because I was so symptomatic. Surgery was scheduled for June 5, 2014. I was in surgery for 5 and 1/2 hours. She told my family that she had never seen someone who needed as much ablating as I did. I was released from the hospital 2 days later and all was good.
On June 8th, I started to become very weak and nauseated. I checked my heart rate and it was 52. They told me not to worry about it as long as it didn't drop below 50 and stay. On June 9th, it dropped to between 44-47 and stayed there. I went to my family dr to have an EKG done (Electrophysiologist was 2 hours from me). My heart rate was 39 and my rhythm was very abnormal. I was sent back to the heart hospital where I had my ablation done at. After hooking me up to monitors, my heart rate dropped to 26 and stayed that way. I was told that I needed a pacemaker. That surgery was performed on June 10th. Everything was good for a while and when I went for my first check up, no adjustments were made to my settings. Pacemaker was functioning 67%.
A month and half later I started having very strong palpitations, dizziness and tachycardia. I called my dr and went in to have Some adjustments made. My pacemaker was functioning 89% at that time. All was well for a couple of months. Starting a few weeks ago, these palpitations came back with a vengeance. Strong enough that I have to sit down because i feel like I can't catch my breath. I try to check my rate when these spells happen and it is always over 120. Takes around 30 minutes or so for it to calm down. It happens probably 10 times a day.
I know this was very long, but I felt like I needed to give a history before I ask these questions. 1. Has anyone else had this happen? 2. If so, what was done to help it? 3. What questions do I need to ask my dr when I go back? (Appt is scheduled for Jan 7.) Thank you all in advance!