My journey through PVCs, Atenolol use and withdraw and cardiac ablation Part 2
Okay port – sorry i’m was cut off i’m gonna just step back a little bit i was put on the treadmill and within one minute my heart rate was 163 and my blood pressure was 141 over 100 10 so the doctor said we’re gonna have to put you back 1 the atenolol um 25 milligrams taken in the morning so this is what i did during this time actually which i kind of left out
It was also one and an event monitor a loop monitor that they had ordered me for 30 days so i’m continuing to record my pvcs and send them in mine unfortunately was one where i would have to call in the landline which i don’t have i don’t know too many people that do have them so i called in from a landline as many times as i could a lot of times had to call them
In for my cell phone which wasn’t as clear so the doctor my cardiologist said that he would you know kind of call me back and see how things were going and let me know where we were gonna go from there and i expected this in a day or two i think it was 2 or 3 days later no i didn’t get a call um so i called them and the nurse got on the phone with me and she was
Just like well i said well um you know i was waiting for a call and nobody has called me and she’s like well that’s because my cardiologist she said he’s just decided to refer you to an ep which i knew what that meant and i’m like oh ok well well that was kind of a shock to me so the whole time that i’m going through all this of course i’m having horrible anxiety a
Horrible panic attacks a real panic attacks where i mean i don’t it for any of you who’ve gone through this you probably already know what i mean i don’t need to explain it to you not realizing that more than likely that the the drastic decrease for me anyway in the atenolol was causing me to have panic attacks so i had to sign up for therapy during this time too
So i’ve had one therapy appointment the lady does know what i’m going through and she’s tried to work with me with some relaxation techniques but you know that kind of crap just doesn’t work um when your body is just i guess pushing out adrenaline dropping adrenaline and you have no control over it and you can’t control it so xanax has really been my best friend
Through all this so step back a little bit i did go to see fairly quickly my ep which is an electrophysiologist and luckily enough for me i suppose he did tell me that he was trained at john hopkins which made me feel a lot better he had really discussed things with me a ton i just was with him like maybe five minutes which kind of surprised me and i explained
To him what i was feeling and he had some of my test results from the cardiologist not all of them some of them and he looked at them and he listened to me for like five minutes and he looked right at me and he’s like i know exactly what you’re going through i can tell you i totally understand and i can help you which i just wanted to cry right then and there i
Just wanted to break down and cry it’s like because every person i’ve been to is like oh this is normal we don’t know why you’re having panic attacks you know oh it’s interesting that your blood pressure’s dropping and while your heart rates really low and you know in the 50s and 40s sometimes that’s okay well it wasn’t okay for me so it’s very frightening that
It seemed like before this gentleman that i seemed like nobody kind of could put their finger on what was going on um my appointment didn’t last with him very long the only thing he really said to me was that i can help you he said that he wanted to do a mapping maybe an ablation he said you know the possibility of a pacemaker but he just doesn’t pop them into
Anybody and even if i did need one it might be way way way down the road hopefully but he also said you know there was a possibility that i had might have something else going on and i asked him what and he was like well if i tell you i know my patients and i know our patients and they just google everything and worry and i said well you know you’ve pegged me a
Hundred percent correct because i don’t know that i so much worry is that i need to understand everything so i do google everything so maybe that was a good thing but i’m thinking maybe he’s thinking either vagus nerve or disorder noumea i’m not quite sure but um my ep is scheduled for friday so i’m doing these videos because i know that i’m very introverted person
But i know from what that i’m that i’m going through that if anybody else is going through this and this might help them i want to do that because i’ve watched other people’s videos and they’ve made me feel comforted i also want to say for anyone who is taking beta blockers first of all don’t ever stop cold turkey i don’t care what anybody tells you i don’t care
If they say well you’re on a load of us people don’t have any problems i don’t care what the research says or what the drug companies say seriously talk to your doctor everybody’s different i’ve talked to people i belong to a cardiac arrhythmia support group and i’ve talked to people who have stopped after 50 and we’re fine stopped after 25 and we’re fine i’ve
Talked to some people who had you have their medications formulated into liquid for them where they’re decreasing one milligram at a time over months but i can tell you that i was on 50 milligrams for three years unknown to me of any of the dependent see side effects or anything like that todya totally oblivious so when they did decrease me to 25 i really thought
That i was having a nervous breakdown and a lapse in my sanity because i do have anxiety disorder but i’ve never had it where i really seriously thought at least five times that i was gonna have to drive myself to this psych unit seriously but really now that i’ve done all my research and thought about things and looked at things and talked to other people i realize
It’s it’s the withdrawal from the medication because i just went from 50 to 25 like that overnight and they’ve dropped me from the 25 to 12.5 only four days and then i’m gonna stop and let me tell you i have had what i term i’d it’s not even nightmares i called them terror dreams um i guess everybody’s different because when they stopped me cold turkey my heart
Rate shot up my blood pressure shot up but now that i’ve been weaning down those have been fine i haven’t had any issues with those but i have had issues with what i call night terrors they’re not there none of the nightmares they’re just horrible horrible night terrors um someone in my life had mentioned to me well maybe i needed to speak to the doctor about that
After my ablation you know that maybe they could put me back on to where i was and kind of leave me down but i’ve decided no i’m just like if they’re if he’s gonna decide to keep me off of them i’m just gonna suffer it um because i don’t want to have to go back i’d rather just stop at the 12.5 and suffer someone i spoke to said that their doctor told them that takes
About 30 days after you completely stop i currently don’t work i don’t know how anybody can doing this but i figure if i’m home i don’t have to take care of other people i can just go through my day maybe nap here and there when i can i can do this but if you have any questions or any comments or anything just um let me know and i will try to answer and after my
Ablation on friday and after i’m completely off the attend alone i’ll try to make another video and post it and i wish everybody well and if you have any comments or questions i will try to get back to you and let me know if this has helped you at all if you have any questions that i might be able to answer right i don’t know um because really this has all happened
To me within really the last 30 to 60 days and it’s been life-altering and and has consumed my life and taken my life from me at least um for the last 60 days anyway so good luck to everyone and i’ll post again soon i hope and i hope i have some good or better news all right thank you
Transcribed from video
PVC, Atenolol, Cardiac Ablation Part 2 By Kristal and Susan Just Two Ladies
