PFO (patent foramen ovale) and taccycardia questions?

[candlemom]

Hello,

I am new here. I am hoping to find people that can relate to what I am experiencing and help me understand this?

I am a 33 year old mother of two who just had surgery to repair my PFO (patent foramen ovale) hole in my heart with a closure device on January 9. The surgery was unsuccessful. I had a bad reaction to Plavix and was dehydrated and sick, so they were (after 2.5 hours of trying unable to thread the catheter needles through the hole to get the closure device in place.

REALLY frustrating. I am still healing physically from that surgery, but what has developed in the last 7 hours is EXTREME tachycardia, to the extent that I am noticing these heart "flubberings" more than 60-100 times an hour during the worst times of the day (ESP at night). The sensation of these heart irrgularities is not unusual - I have had these all my life, but MAYBE once or twice a month, not 1000 a day. The onset of this escalation seems so sudden, too. It has me deeply concerned.

I saw my cardiologist again yesterday, who has ordered a monitor for me (they ran out) to track the tacchycardia, and is waiting for me to heal (really bad bruises left from first surgery) before scheduling the next surgery to repair my PFO hole. It'll take about a week to get the monitor, and in the meantime, I am having a hard time sleeping through these very odd and constant heart rhythms. They kind of take my breath away and make me very nervous.

Can ANYONE relate to any of this?

Thank you so much for reading...

[candlemom]

Thank you guys SO much.

I am digesting what you have to say and am so grateful to be able to actually be among people for whom heart-topics are so well understood and openly discussed.

I am not sure what to classify my irregular heartbeats as. Essentially, it feels like my heart stops, catches and suspends in midair for a second, then literally rolls over and restarts again. It happens a LOT (counted 77 times in one hour today). There is a sharp pain sometimes near my left collarbone, too - but mostly the pain is simply in the actual physical sensation of kind of taking my breath away and in the anxiety that my heart will not come back to regular rhythm again.

I am just so worried and frustrated, but my cardiologist seems pretty calm about it, telling me to go to the ER if it got so bad I could not sleep again or was panicky about it.

Is this even remotely normal? Is this something dangerous inherently? I am just lost as to how to classify or deal with this. And I am very nervous about having the 2nd surgery if this is how bad it got after the first.

Thanks for listening...

[Momto3]

So sorry to hear the procedure was not successful. I can only imagine how frustrated you must be.  

You mentioned tachycardia and "flubberings" in your post....By definition, tachycardia is a heartbeat over 100 bpm.  Is that what you feel?  Or, are you experiencing extra beats (pacs/pvcs)?  You can have extra beats as well as tachycardia, but also they can occur separately.

There are lots of folks here who can relate to both the tachy episodes and the extra beats.  Welcome, you are in good company

Connie

[anacyde]

I would be frustrated too, I'm sorry you're having such a time of this.  I'm too familiar with medication reactions, when I was younger it seemed I was allergic to every medicine in the world.  Those reactions can be extremely unpleasant.

I would call your doctor if this has newly developed since you saw him.  It's very possible that you're having palpitations from the stress and anxiety all of this must have caused you, and that is understandable.  However, if you start feeling anything in terms of dizziness, fainting, chest pain...just go to the emergency room.

You mentioned a reaction to Plavix.  Are you on anything else new?  Tachycardia and palpitations are a common side effect for many medications, particularly ones for blood thinning and heart rhythms.  If you have an ask a nurse service in your area, call them.  If you are on new medications, you should put a call in to your pharmacist, as they can usually be reached until the pharmacy closes for the day.

From what I understand, PFOs can be pretty symptomatic in some people.  It may be that in conjunction with stress.  Still, it is best to make sure since you did just go through this procedure.