Saturday, December 11, 2010

We don't need no stinkin' pacemaker

C has decided he no longer needs the pace maker. So at 10 o'clock at night, he snapped the negative wire on the ventricle pacer.  The ventricle was the only thing being paced, so the pace maker became useless.  Worse, because it didn't have both the positive and negative wire, the pace maker was not sensing the beats and fired once per second.  C was screaming and our nurse kept saying "but it shouldn't be firing, he's not at 60 beats per minute".  TheMan said "I think by definition, broken means not working correctly".  The nurse went and got the resident on the floor who also stood looking at the pace maker.  I again pointed out the green pacing light was flsahing instead of the orange sensing light.  She decided (finally) to just turn the pacemaker off.  Silence fell as C stopped screaming since he was no longer getting shocked.  The lead up was a bit frustrating, but having the pace maker off is both nerve wracking  and fantastic.

2 comments:

  1. "I think by definition, broken means not working correctly."
    Wow. I understand wanting to know why it was not working, but while the baby is screaming in pain is not the time to figure it out. Sheesh.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm glad he's not using it ... and I've had a pacer for years and this can happen internally too ... it sucks ... because I will tell you that you can feel the shocks, or your body jumping with the machine ... it tooks years for my cardio to believe me and finally turn it to a relaxed enough setting but when I'm in deep sleep I've been awoken by the jump in my stomach as it's firing but lucky the "shock" pain is gone ... Thank God for them turning it off ... poor Charlie was surely uncomfy as I have one internally and I know I've been ... God Bless and I hope he's getting better everyday and can come home soon!!!

    ReplyDelete