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Wenchebach
by Camie061, Jan 19, 2009 02:43AM
So this is a somewhat complicated situation. Any help would be amazing. I am a 22 year old female (senior in college) and have been having heart problems for the last 2 years. Randomly started sophomore year- I woke up with my heart racing. Wore the monitors for a while and found out I had SVT. Spent time with my cardiologist on test and what not. In the end we decided to go with a catheter ablation to get rid of the issue. About 4 days after the surgery I was feeling weird and knew something wasn't right. Went back to wearing a monitor and found Mobitz type 1 (Wenchebach). Apparently this was a side effect to the surgery (which we were not informed about). Anyways, I have been told over and over that it is a benign issue and I should not be able to feel it....but I DO!! I feel it all the time at night and it prevents me from feeling at peace with the situation. I have tried medication and it did not work out. Right now I am back on Levsinex at night and it is not working. I am also struggling with random chest pains (sharp and quick). I know that I produce an excess amount of Cortisol as well. When I am having the dropped beat at night I feel like I am hooked up to an electricity current and I get the 'fight or flight' feeling in my chest as the beats are dropping. What the heck is my body doing to me?! I hate dealing with this every night and although they tell me I am fine, I don't feel fine. This is supposed to be benign but clearly it is not for me. I can feel activity in my chest all the time. Help! I need some ideas, answers...something!
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While I can't offer any direct help this post will "bump" your post back to the top. More time may produce more input, with luck form someone who has some suggestions.
I will admit I was disappointed to read Wenchback is a (normal?) side effect of your ablation procedure, but if it is benign and normally not symptomatic then I guess that should be acceptable...but in your case it isn't.
Perhaps some more current "numbers" would be helpful to others, rest HR, BP, more description, e.g., "fight or flight feeling" doesn't tell me anything...others, younger than me, may know what you mean, but I don't.
Mobitz' Block Type I 2nd degree AV-Block (Wenckebach’s phenomenon) is a benign type of heart block. It rarely progresses to anything serious. Unfortunately, for those who experience symptoms....I'm not aware of any treatment other than learning to live with it. It is not anything that would indicate the need for pacemaker implantation.
This can occur post ablation, not always and for some there are no symptoms. It is a form of incomplete AV heart block in which there is progressive lengthening of conduction time in cardiac tissue with P-R interval increasing until there is not a ventricular response (dropped beat). This is followed by a conducted beat and then the cycle repeats itself. This tends to be a self limiting condition and often resolves over time.
Sorry to hear that you are having at tough time coping with these unwanted sensations in the chest.
I do suffer from the same symptoms you explain trying to sleep at night. Especially the sharp and quick pains/twinges in the chest, and the feelings of suffocation where you force yourself to breath through the mouth. I hate that!
I can tell you that these symtoms are anxiety related and strike without warning sometimes and I've had these since I was 19. I'm 32 now and even though I do expereice these less than I have in the past, they are still unpleasant. Sometimes these sensations will go away for days, weeks, sometimes months, and then come back again. I haven't really got to the bottom of it, and it seems that if I'm pretty stressed out or bummed out about something (and of course the type of person I am) I'll start to obsess about it and blow it completly out of proportion.
I have noticed that those that are really 'aware' or 'in-tune' to their lives, bodies, and surroundings have a tendency to be more subseptible to expereicing these sensations of panic and anxiety. I guess you can label these people with "OCD" but I really hate that diagnosis! My success in life has come from being OCD because it's required for me to make a living. Call me a meticulous voyer! Sometimes I feel that I have autism/savant type characteristics in the way I retain my memories. I retain them in pictures mostly. I do have a photogenic memory to a degree, but I just feel that I retain knowledge or things that I shouldn't normally. Everything I encounter I remember the littlest details, scientifically and mathmatically. Its quite odd, and sometimes I intimidate certain people with the vast knowledge I've retained over the years.
I hope you can be assured that what your experiencing won't harm you as bad as it may feel that it is. I completely reconstructed my lifestyle in the past 2-3 months to battle the panic, heart skips, anxiety, substance abuse (nicotine/caffeine/alcohol). You can click on my nickname and check out the many posts I've contributed to this community. This is a good place to come and find answers to soothe the mind and relax, and be with others that unfortunately experience the same things you do. Hope this helps.. Zach
My story is exactly the same as yours although I think I was diagnosed with Wenchebach before the ablation last July. The night time dropped beats disapeared for about 6 months but are back now. I had them for the past month until 3 nights ago and the fact that I say that makes me certain I'll get them again tonight. It's almost debilitating, isn't it? I can't work out now and when I get the night episodes, I often can't sleep which makes my job performance suffer. I think that if I had the choice, I'd just black out at 7pm and wake up in the morning and that's not the way I want to live my life.
What does help me is to have some 50mg benzodiazapine pills around (chill pills that also make you tired). Just having them around gives me a safety net and when I get very bad palps, they help me relax and fall asleep. Perhaps you can talk to your Dr about benzodiazapine. Conventional wisdom would be to get a nervous person on antianxiety meds but I don't like long term medication and don't like the side effects, after all, I don't have a psychological problem, but rather a physiological problem that induces acute psychological distress at random times. I'd rather take a benzodiazapine a few times a month than an antianxiety drug all the time.