my tune up

[surfgirl]

So I went and got my pacemaker tuned up............it was a BIG deal......took almost 2 hours.....5 people in the room, all playing in my heart.  They narrowed my PR interval, which had been in a 1st degree block pattern all along, and I still had a LBBB, so they narrowed the QRS.......I left feeling great, but this past week I have noticed many more runs of V Tach..........at doing cardio my heart rate will go up past 200. then down to 168, then hang around 184............I only get dizzy in the 200-230 range, but it only stays there for maybe 10 seconds at a time.  My question is, does it seem logical that the heart has to adjust to new settings, and will be irritable?  Or maybe it is a coincidence?  I mean this has happened before the tune up, so maybe there is no connection.  I DO feel better.  I guess I just answered my own question............I will keep my mouth shut.  LOL.

[surfgirl]

Beluga................and champagne, and deviled eggs with salmon...........stop me.

[Thatch]

Sevruga?

[surfgirl]

Have you ever heard your high fluid signal go off?  I did on a cruise, and I thought,( like a blonde), that it was a whistle on the ship. because we were pulling into a port at the time.  Yeah, yeah, Thatch, I know..........I am a sucker for caviar.

[often]

My low battery signal sounds like a British police siren....I can't wait til it is low battery time so I can drive people nuts trying to figure it out.  Of course, before that happens I will be going nuts trying to figure it out, myself.  I shall ask them Wednesday when I get to have that done.  Meanwhile I am trying to come up with this quarter's stumper.  I like to find questions that the medronic tech has no answer to.  It is such fun to listen to them stumble around trying not to admit they don't know.  So far I have only been able to do it once.

[Thatch]

I just had one about a month past. With mine it takes a tech who uses the wand for an echo, you are hooked up just like for an echo, there is a tech to run the cumputer that is hooked up to the wand over the device and a doctor to tell them what to do and how to set it. For instance since I have a dual pacing device the idea is to get the right and left ventricles to fire for optimum contraction of the heart muscle and mine is set to fire the right 2 milleseconds before the left. They can also change what your pulse rate at rest is and how sensitive the motion sensor is.
I am an audiophile and play around with speakers and handle a lot of very powerful magnets, so I had mine set so that a magnet cannot turn it off or set of alarms. Nobody wants their chest to beep like a garbage truck backing up.

Thatch

[often]

what is the difference between the tune-up and the interrogation...and at what point is the tune-up if it is different from the interrogation.  

I get to go for the interrogation Wednesday....they have just opened the new Cardiovascular building at the U of M.  I guess now I will have to allow and extra half hour just to get from the car to the building.  sigh

And they better get rid of the diaphragm pacing.  Peeps look at me funny when my diaphragm starts hopping about.

[FLBrat]

the medtronic people call it "optimization".  The settings are done while you are hooked up to all the monitors etc so that the most optimal settings are made.  Now, Surfgirl, you tell the technical side of it.

[surfgirl]

Thanks, Tony...that seems like a reasonable approach, and it is the one I have chosen.  So far, so good.

[FLBrat]

did they mention that the tune ups help save battery life??  At least that is what I have been told.

[FLBrat]

and you know...when you feel better, you are better.  I get a tune up on Oct 01.

[va_tony]

As long as the v-tach isn't causing you to faint and doesn't set off your ICD, you are probably better off with the new settings since it makes you feel better.

[ireneo]

I don't know. From my own experience after the ablations there's a period of irritability but duh - they were poking around in there and frying pieces of my heart. And if I have a longer tachy time my heart will be a bit touchy the rest of the day - more hiccups and mini-tachy's. But a re-setting of a pacer/ICD? I don't know. We're going over to my folks today. I can ask my Dad if he's had that happen after they've fiddled with his ICD. Come to think of it, since they just replaced the ICD with a pacer, if a change triggers arrhythmias that would surely do it.