Made it through the other side

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Patrick7651

Active member
Joined
Nov 15, 2016
Messages
28
Location
New York
Made it through surgery without incident yesterday. Proud owner of an internal Timex. Made it out of ICU this morning. Uneventful day until I hit dinner time. Had some serious heart beat issues, LBB I think. On pacer now. Kind of scary. Doc explained that this is sometimes an expected result of surgery. Starting to feel a little better now. Could be the drugs
 
great news Patrick, lbbb have that to after my ohs, still got it and cardio seems chilled about it, don't overdo it and good luck ,
 
Welcome to the other side-I was diagnosed before surgery with LBBB...thought I was going to come out of surgery with a pacemaker...but I did not.......may eventually need one....cardiologist not concerned
 
Good wishes from the UK too. I ended up with a pacemaker too - an external one for a week after surgery, in case they had damaged the heart's electrics in the process. Turned out that they had, so a permanent, dual chamber pacemaker was added. I have had no issues with it, as far as i can tell. Keep us posted, and if you want to know more I'm happy to share info.
 
My recovery has been going fairly well and I have advanced my endurance to 5 laps around hospital floor. A hiccup with scheduling meds caused some serious pain yesterday morning. Once I got them back on schedule I had the best night of sleep last night.
Then came this morning!
It seemed as though the pain meds were wearing off and I had re upped my usual dose. This wasn't helping. The pain rapidly increased in my right chest and shoulder. It came to the point that is was by far the worst pain I had ever experienced. The crash team descended as I was writhing in agony and profusely sweating. The pain began radiating down my arm and up my neck. I swore I was having a heart attack. After x-rays, palpating, ekg and a large dose of dilaudid I finally got some relief. It appears they believe that air my have entered my chest cavity through my chest tube wound. Waiting on a confirmatory CT scan. What I can say is that it was scary as ****. Even the nurses who were there later confided that they were afraid for me.
Wow! I hope this is over soon.

By the way feeling great now
 
Patrick, I had just about the same thing happen. I didn't have a pain med until 3 days after surgery. I had been walking good lengths right from the start and then......boom it hit! My only wish was that I had started the pain medicine sooner. Just could not believe it but it is what it is. Do not overdo it now and give yourself the time to heal. There will be both up and down days and you just have to go with it.
 
I learned today that the CT came back neg for any clots in my lungs, which is good. Went in for my electrical study today to check on my LBBB. Not good news. I now have more hardware installed in the form of a pacemaker. I am trying to stay positive but it's hard.
 
We do what we must.

Hopefully some if the members with pace makers here can let you feel less anxious about them and their effect on life.

Best Wishes
 
Patrick - don't sweat the pacemaker. When I had my valve replaced, my heart must have gotten bored. After the surgery, my heart went fast, then very fast, then slow, then very slow, then it just plain stopped for periods of up to 20-30 seconds at a time. Trust me when I say that it is no fun to watch your own heart monitor go flat-line. One minute you're fine (sorta), then the next it is "lights out." You awaken to a ring of very serious and concerned faces all around your bed as they try to figure out what happened. I had this on and off for about 4 days, at which time they said that they could either continue trying to control things with meds or they could implant a pacemaker. I asked them "Do you have a pacemaker handy?" When they said that they did, I asked them "What are we waiting for?"

That was 6 years ago. I am now on pacemaker number 2. Number 1 was retired when one of my leads failed and needed to be replaced. I can tell you that really the only time I notice that I have the pacemaker is when I look in a mirror with my shirt off. I'm now 69 years young. I still work 50+ hours/week and hit the gym 5 days a week, travel, do home projects, etc.. Life is good. Yours can be, too.
 

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