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11th week post ablation symptoms
I had an ablation 11 weeks ago, for pvcs. Since then my pvcs have continued and for the last 2 weeks even increased. I am on day 5 of wearing a Cardionet monitor. I am now experiencing fast heart rate when I wake during different times of the night. My pulse slows down once I am up and moving. I am scared and
feeling depressed. Thank you to those who commented on my first post it meant more than you will ever know.
feeling depressed. Thank you to those who commented on my first post it meant more than you will ever know.
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Don't scare yourself to death here Mockingbird....at about the 90 day mark after my ablation i too had to have the cardionet because of these freaky sort of random runs of who knows what...my heart surgeon said it was atrial fib my cardio doc said it was palps...they pretty much caught everything on the cardionet and told me i just had to be patient. That went over real well believe me...they ended up putting me on that low dose of antenolol the beta blocker to help me thru the rough patches and it became the new wonder drug for me at least. It definately stopped them in their tracks so you may want to ask your doc to help you out a little if possible rather than cold turkey and roughing it. I know alot of other members on this site went thru the exact same thing as i did and now you are. I thought for sure it was a fail (it wasn't), then i thought i was being punished for something (i wasn;t), then i thought i would die in my sleep (i didn't) so the joke was on me even tho i know it doesn't feel like it at the time. The best i can offer up to you which helped me alot and really put things into perspective was that my heart surgeon told me that when we go thru ablations they don;'t even know up until the six month mark if we are a fail or not...the reason? Pretty simple and it helped me alot....Dr. Hao reminded me that during the ablation they are basically assaulting our hearts...they are poking it with the cath,,,they are prodding the different areas, they are penetrating the surface of the heart and on top of all of that they are zapping it, they are re routing the electrical pathways, they are feeding it adrenaline and setting off the max amount of system overload that they can without killing us to preserve life for us thru the end results. My heart doc says in essence they are irritating the heck out of it, the heart reacts and swells up and on top of that little ditty it has to re teach itself thru repetition to fire off in the correct pattern where it really is used to going the wrong way instead of the right way. Dr. Hao said to think of it as being punches and pummeled and now it has to heal from the inside out and thats what takes so much time. I know the feeling for sure tho...the day i realized i no longer felt my heart i wanted to scream from the rooftops i was so darned happy. But it took for me at least to about the 4 month mark where i didn;t get those random fast runs,,,,didn't wake up in the middle of the nite with the oh no feeling getting yourself dressed quickly thinking you are going to have to call 911 (again) and on top of that those feeling like its going to start again and suddenly just fades away (i assume because it is learning the new pathway). Personally if it were my body i would call the doc and ask them if you are a candidate for a low dose of beta blocker to help you out.....why go thru this when something can be done to keep it at bay? Just a suggestion but i know it worked for me and others and Mockingbird i appreciated the message you sent me and we are all here for you thru thick and thin......it gets easier as each day passes just don't tough it out if you dont have to.....
Thank you Cindy and itdood for your responses. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. 90% of my pvcs were coming from a location in the right ventricle. I am actually still on the same boatload of meds. that I was on before the ablation. I have learned more from you than I have from either of my doctors. My surgeon talked to me once about 5 hours after the ablation and that was a very brief conversation. I finally see him on Dec. 7, and he will hopefully have more info. Cindy, I would like to get a second opinion from your Dr., do you know if I have to have a referral? I totally relate to your story Cindy, about waking up and wondering if I should call 911. Again, I cannot thank you enough for sharing your stories and your wisdom wth me. Mockingbird (Brooke).
I've never had an ablation but I can relate to tachy episodes when lying down. I get them from time to time. I read a lot of posts with the same concern as-well.
I've never gotten a straight up answer from medical people on why that can happen. I'm left guessing. I think it has something to do with some sort of central nervous system glitch. The central nervous system controls our heart rate via the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve branches. One slows down heart rate, the other speeds it up.
For whatever reason it glitches when lying down and either the signal to slow heart rate isn't getting there, or an inappropriate signal to speed up is being sent.
What I think is happening with lying down is that for some reason the signals to the heart from the CNS are getting messed up for some reason. Could be pressure on nerves, could be tissue inflammation... who knows.
The only other thing I can say about the ablation is that it takes time for them to heal and the final results can't be assessed for up to 6 months from what I hear. I might have more insight if you could let us know where your PVC focus was, what was used to ablate it (RF or cryo), how many burns were made, how did they induce to the PVCs to map them....Best of luck. I'm a firm believer that sadness/depression can hinder your healing. Become positive, whatever it take, become positive. [off my soapbox].
I've never gotten a straight up answer from medical people on why that can happen. I'm left guessing. I think it has something to do with some sort of central nervous system glitch. The central nervous system controls our heart rate via the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve branches. One slows down heart rate, the other speeds it up.
For whatever reason it glitches when lying down and either the signal to slow heart rate isn't getting there, or an inappropriate signal to speed up is being sent.
What I think is happening with lying down is that for some reason the signals to the heart from the CNS are getting messed up for some reason. Could be pressure on nerves, could be tissue inflammation... who knows.
The only other thing I can say about the ablation is that it takes time for them to heal and the final results can't be assessed for up to 6 months from what I hear. I might have more insight if you could let us know where your PVC focus was, what was used to ablate it (RF or cryo), how many burns were made, how did they induce to the PVCs to map them....Best of luck. I'm a firm believer that sadness/depression can hinder your healing. Become positive, whatever it take, become positive. [off my soapbox].
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