this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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I have no medical training whatsoever so please take with a grain of salt, however, it was explained to me that electrically speaking my heart is greatly rotated despite its physical orientation. The conduction pathways for the electrical activity are off-axis.
It's always going to look abnormal on some machine that is frequently used to evaluate results. I was told to ignore these.
I was put on a monitor for a month and a few events were observed where the primary pacemaker failed to generate a beat, causing the slower secondary pacemaker to take over as a natural biological failsafe, but I'm told this is a fairly common occurrence and most people don't notice these events.
I could be totally off base but that was as much as I was capable of understanding.
(no medical training here either, just what I've learned and researched thanks to surviving two heart attacks)
That would sound like a weird configuration, but "technically good enough" as long as the chambers contract in the right order relative to each other. I'm guessing you could develop conduction problems with age, which could have a problem repairing "the normal way", and the "smart" EKGs that automatically spit out an analysis, will always show a warning when they don't see the normal order of electrical activity.
If you are at risk of hearth problems, I strongly suggest getting familiar with he early warning symptoms. We don't normally feel the heart itself, it has no nerve terminations intended for that, so the warning signs feel like maybe a stomach ache, or pain in your arm, or neck, or some burning, or similar. "Heart adjacent", not directly where you'd think the heart is, and it changes from person to person.
I wish you never have any problem, but if you do, don't try to "wait it out"; once you know something weird can happen, get at least a blood pressure meter and an oxymeter (even cheap non-certified ones are better than nothing), and learn what your "normal" vitals look like. Then stay moderately vigilant for any changes, rush to the ER when they go out of "normal".
I appreciate the advice! That's very kind of you. I'll take that into consideration.
I do have reentrant issues sometimes where it can race for no reason, and that probably places me at higher risk of events; which is why I was at the cardiologist in the first place. It will abruptly double or triple because one discharge cycles back sometimes and causes the next and it will suddenly be at 180-200 BPM from rest. At the same time, nobody lives forever. I'll take reasonable steps and enjoy that I get to live today.
It's a little funny but the last opinion was I ought to be alright for a good while.