First hurdle cleared. Got a negative covid test today. I almost didn’t get out of the garage at the hospital. All the sortie (exit) signs were for people looking to get into the hospital. Got to take a taxi to the hospital (a different one) for 7 AM tomorrow.
Fully recharged. It was a breeze. Thanks for all your wishes.
Great!
Mazel tov!
Thanks for the quick update. Hari 2.0 is clearly more efficient.
Excellent news!
Didja get the USB port put in so that you can recharge your own phone?
According to the thread on beds, that USB port may not be designed for what you think it might be designed for
Incidentally, does anyone know why I had to strip down to my birthday suit for the operation including removing socks and even my wedding ring. Without socks my feet got very cold although the very kindly nurse put a heated blanket over them. In fact, all the medical staff were extremely kind to me.
So they could assess your peripheral circulation quickly, in an emergency. Same reason they often require you to remove nail polish.
Congrats. Did they replace the whole pacemaker? That’s typically what they do.
I believe they did. Different nurses and technicians told me different things. Some said they would replace the battery; others the whole device. But the old one was nearly 15 years old and when I had a routine examination in December–when they decided to replace it–the nurse said it was a model she rarely saw these days and had to read up on it for a minute.
One interesting fact. From past examinations, I knew my pulse rate without the pacemaker was around 30 and I expected to hear my pulse go down to 30 (there was an audible pulse meter during the procedure) but it never did. They must have unplugged the lead from the old one and plugged it in to the new one pretty much instantaneously.
I can’t take a shower for a week. But the dressing comes off tomorrow.
I, too, had a couple of surgeries within the last year, in the winter, during (ofc) the COVID era. Yet the whole experience was great, and getting cared for was…kind of luxurious.
Glad to hear everything went well Hari!
Do pacemakers these days require fine tuning after the install? A guy I worked with a few years ago had to have his replaced(expired service life/discontinued model like yours) and he had to keep going back every couple of weeks to get it tweaked because it wouldn’t keep the right pace for his job? Something like that?
I’m not sure, he might be too different of a case, his heart problems were drug induced, if that makes a difference.
I have a follow up appointment on Tuesday, but I am not sure if that is to look at the incision or fine tune. They set it for 60 and I just checked it and it is doing a steady 60, so I don’t think any tweaking will be needed. The old one kept up a regular 60 for nearly 15 years.
I worked for Medtronic for 26 years, and it feels good to know I helped, in a small way, to make something that kept you ticking for 15 years.
Pacemaker technology has advanced a lot since your 1st one was made, so I’d have been surprised if they had left your old one in. The old lead was also probably changed, if they could remove it easily.
Do you notice if it speeds up when you exert yourself, maybe after climbing stairs?
Dorkvader, they often fine tune them after implantation. The pacers have accelerometers to sense movement and exercise. How the pacer responds to that is adjustable.
Yes, it was Meditronic; so is the new one. They said the old lead was working fine and they didn’t replace it. I expect it would have been a good deal more complicated if they had since the lead goes directly into the heart and it takes a couple of weeks to get securely implanted, during which physical activity is restricted.
I have a device for managing apnea that’s similar to a pacemaker. I believe the wizards who developed it came from Medtronic. Rated battery life is 10 years as well, but real-world experience is more like 11-12 years. I do know that only the device itself is changed in a “simple” office procedure, leaving the two leads in place.