Little nervous....

I think I'm in a general state of panic. Going to the doctor in a few hours to talk about the Defib unit he wants to put in. My heart is pumping at 30 percent, so his recommendation is to install one and stay away from large magnets, arc wielding and airport metal detectors.


Hmmm..... I need cofee.... talk to you guys later.

Good luck, I hope all is fine.

Good luck, Better get ya ticker fixed tho, can't drink with a dicky ticker

Best of luck, I hope everything is ok.

Hope everything works out well, man. P.S. Why would a defib help if its pumping at 30%? Don't you really need a stint or valve replacement or something?

It might be an under-active electrical system as opposed to clogged arteries. The defib could be used to regulate the pulse.

-walker

Hope everything works out well, man. P.S. Why would a defib help if its pumping at 30%? Don't you really need a stint or valve replacement or something?

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He probably means a pacemaker/defibulator. The term has become pretty interchangable anymore. Pacemakers set the rate. Defibs kick your heart in the @55 when it starts doing stupid ****, and alot of units are both in 1 case.

Dont worry man you'll do fine. I know in the short term it's scary but at far as heart surgery goes putting one of them things in is like putting in a door bell and shouldnt mess you up at all. Biggest thing it will do, besides helping you out, is give me fits when I try to run a EKG on ya if you dont tell me its there.
Your EKG will show a nice little spike telling me if it's actually pacing you at the time of the EKG and basicly making your EKG useless to me, but then again I'm only a paramedic. On the plus side I can guarentee that if ya ever call 911 to go to the hospital you'll always get a paramidc rig instead of a basic life support rig . . . and we have MORPHINE

Pumbaa said:

we have MORPHINE

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and homebrew!

Michael_Schaap said:

I think I'm in a general state of panic. Going to the doctor in a few hours to talk about the Defib unit he wants to put in. My heart is pumping at 30 percent, so his recommendation is to install one and stay away from large magnets, arc wielding and airport metal detectors.


Hmmm..... I need cofee.... talk to you guys later.

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good luck bro. keep us posted and take care.

Hope all goes well man.

Hang in there man. Good luck.

Good Luck Michael. Hope all works out.

Pumbaa said:

He probably means a pacemaker/defibulator. The term has become pretty interchangable anymore. Pacemakers set the rate. Defibs kick your heart in the @55 when it starts doing stupid ****, and alot of units are both in 1 case.

Dont worry man you'll do fine. I know in the short term it's scary but at far as heart surgery goes putting one of them things in is like putting in a door bell and shouldnt mess you up at all. Biggest thing it will do, besides helping you out, is give me fits when I try to run a EKG on ya if you dont tell me its there.
Your EKG will show a nice little spike telling me if it's actually pacing you at the time of the EKG and basicly making your EKG useless to me, but then again I'm only a paramedic. On the plus side I can guarentee that if ya ever call 911 to go to the hospital you'll always get a paramidc rig instead of a basic life support rig . . . and we have MORPHINE

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Yes thats it, a defibulator. When I went to the hospital on October 30th and they did not find anything I was transfered to another hospital (stay over hospital). The nurse ask me if I wanted morphine. I said.. nah... I've been dealing with the pain for 4 days now (terrible headaches). I'm cool. She was like... nooo... we'll give you something for the ride so your comfortable. Not much... like 4mg. Never had morphine before and wife was encouraging me so what the hell. Wow.... no wonder the stuff is kept under lock and key Glad I had it too cause the ambulance ride... well.... I always thought it would be a nice and peaceful ride. HA! Yeah right Was fun though... was pumped up with morphine, but it was fun

cowain said:

Hope everything works out well, man. P.S. Why would a defib help if its pumping at 30%? Don't you really need a stint or valve replacement or something?

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When I originally went to the hospital and they found the tumor I was schedualed to have it removed on the 5th of November. After some tests they found that my heart was only pumping at 22%. I was told that this would be a max risk operation. If they had not found out basically I could have had a heart attack right there on the operating table while removing the tumor. So at that time instead of getting the tumor out they put in a stent. One artery is completely blocked (a part of my heart is dead because of it), they other was blocked by 87%. They put the stent in this one which gave me 8%. As Pumbaa said the defib unit is basically a pacemaker. On steriods. If the computer senses the need it would give you a jolt. I imagine is a a pretty shocking experience

I hope everything goes smoothly for you, Man.


I have (or had) an OVERACTIVE electrical system. A birth defect caused me to have too many pathways that carried current around the outside of my heart. Under heavy, full-bodied, physical stress (like highschool football practice/weight-training), my heart would leap into a strange rhythm and my pulse would shoot way over 200... it was basically un-countable. Not life threatening, but something you had to take medicine for or have surgery to correct.

The medicine prescribed to control this had a side effect of causing impotence. Not something a 17 year old boy wants to look forward to for the rest of his life, so.... START CUTTING, DOC!

I had a could of procedures done while I was highschool to correct this (not open-heart... all done via snaking tools through main arteries). All better now.

Anyway... where I was going with this was MORPHINE.

When these two surgeries were performed (each was about 7 hours long), I was awake. They had to simulate the effects of hard exercise on my body (highschool football was what lead me to finding all this out) yet they also had to sedate me b/c of the pain of all that hardware running through my body.

To achieve these two polar opposite body states simultaneously, they had a constant drip of two chemicals going into my arm. One was morphine. The other was adrenaline.

Whoooooooo-Weeeeeeeee!

I have never been so totally torn up in my life. I was WIDE awake and capable of breaking the restraints on the table that my arms were strapped to thanks to all that adrenaline, but I was so hammered from the morphine that I could not speak... i just made a big "vrraaaaaallllllllgggggaaaaafffooooooo" noise whenever I tried.

-walker

The surgeon is pretty cool. He was like... well... you have not even started cardiac therapy yet (just started today).... and it has not even been a full 3 months since putting in the stent. And you were just on the table 6 weeks ago to get the tumor out. I think the Cardiologist is ahead of the game a bit. Lets see how you do with a month of therapy..... we'll get another MRI... and we'll have a better picture of how the tyroid is doing (tumor was attached to the pituitary glad but was also attached to several nerve endings of the thyroid and has damaged it).

So I have another apointment with him in a month. I did not get the impression from him that I'm in imediate danger... he understands why the cardiologist is worried about the numbers (30% is very low... average is 65%), but does not think that I should rush into this. I'm in no rush to have a battery in my chest so I'm all for waiting a bit.

Cardiac rehab was cool. I was there for like 2 hours and thought she would never run out of things to talk about. It's a 3 times a week thing with a class on Wensdays. She thought homebrewing should be an interesting and relaxing hobby She said its good for the heart So whenever I'm there I'll be hooked up to this monitor that like sends them signals of my vitals on thier computer. Last thing I did there was walk around this track for 6 minutes (of course my dog Thunder was walking with me, which gave chuckles all around) One thing she said is a repeat of what the surgeon said. She had just released somone who started out with a heart pumping at 12% and after the program got up to 60% through diet and excercise. So that was just real encouraging to hear.

Thanks for all the replies. I think I went off the deep end this morning when I thought I was going to be "under the knife" again like in a day. Made it 38 years without a hospital visit and within 2 months managed to arrive at one at least 6 times..... not particularly in a rush to get back.

hang in bro. you got more people pull'n for you than you realize. we're brew buds, we hang tight together

Walker -
You ever get a dose of a drug called adenosine while you were in A-Tac? Adenosine is a drug blocks eletrical activity comming and litterally STOPS your heart for about 5 seconds then it wears off and and everything is back to normal. I LOVE giving that drug and watching a patient and their EKG. They are sitting there ticking along at like 200+ beats per minute then they get a "Oh ****" look, their heart stops, eyes roll back and pop right back up as thier heart jumps back to a normal rate of like 80ish. Man it's cool as hell to watch.

Schapp -
when ya get that defibulator put in just a heds up. IF it ever fires off you wont have to even think "Did my defib just fire?" . . . you'll know it. I've had it described to me as getting kicked inthe chest by a mule or getting hit with a baseball bat. The good news is they work great. I have never had a patient who's defibulator went off that wasnt in real good shape by the time I got there.

I hope the rehab works out for ya man. It's will be a lot of hard work but you'll be surprized at how good you will feel with a cardiac output closer to 60% then 22%.

Pumbaa said:

Walker -
You ever get a dose of a drug called adenosine while you were in A-Tac?

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Nope... and I can't say I'd like to have it, based on your description!

Btw: Mine was actually V-Tac. I had SVT (specifically; WPW Syndrome).

-walker

Michael_Schaap said:

Glad I had it too cause the ambulance ride... well.... I always thought it would be a nice and peaceful ride. HA! Yeah right

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I hear that. I was in a car accident a couple weeks ago. I got hit by a guy that slid through a stop sign, and I went down an embankment and flipped over into a stream. I was taken to the hospital as a precaution on a backboard with the neck brace. The guy said that it is supposed to protect you, not make it comfortable! I was already pretty sore from the accident, and jarring around all the way to the ER was not pleasant-but it was effective. I did not have the benefit of morphine, though

back on track, I am pulling for you, Michael. I hope that everything works out.