Monday, February 29, 2016

When will I get used to all of this

Yesterday I woke up feeling weird and the pacemaker did not appear -- to me -- to be doing what it's been doing this past two weeks.  I was a little dizzy and my pulse was at 114.  I thought the pacemaker should be trying to bring that rate down but it didn't.

I put in a call to the cardiologist and he called me back!!  On a Sunday!  He explained to me again how the pacemaker is supposed to work.  I don't know why I can't seem to understand it.  Anyway, he said that the high heart rate was an Afib episode and that the pacemaker does NOT do anything to help Afib.  All the pacemaker is supposed to do is keep my heart rate from dropping down into the dangerous "flat-line" condition.  I still don't understand why the pacemaker is feeling different than it did before but I hope it's because the inflammation and swelling is going down and it is settling in.  And I hope that is a good sign for NOT needing another surgery.

But he said that the high heart rate I was experiencing should calm down and shouldn't be lasting for hours so he told me to take an extra dose of one of my medications (Metoprolol) and give it several hours and call him back if it didn't calm down.

So at 12:30 it was still going strong so I called him back.  He had me take my blood pressure and it was fine so he told me that when I took my night medications, I should increase the other medication (Flecainide).  The heart rate went down to the high 90s and stayed there the rest of the day and all night.  I felt much better.

Today I took Coco to his vet appointment and he now has pain in his cervical spine so I left there with many medications for Coco (prednisone, tramadol and a muscle relaxer).  She did a laser treatment while I was there and I think it helped him.  I'm going to take him back for more of those.  And I will probably try acupuncture for him.  I will do anything for him.

When we left the vet I brought Coco home and then did a little shopping and I realized while I was shopping that I was feeling wonderful. I checked my pulse and it was down to a smooth 70 -- not an erratic 70.  YAY!

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