Four years ago I had a Boston Scientific pacemaker implanted. When two months later I told the person monitoring it from her office that I still suffered from some of the symptoms I had before the pm went in she insisted that everything checked out fine. I asked to talk to the doctor, stating I was very concerned about why I was still having shortness of breath and an inability to walk very far without feeling a tightness in the chest, symptoms that had accompanied my low pulse rate before the pm.

She said she would go ask the doctor. When she came back she said that he said it was ok to tweak something. I don't know whether she ever did anything. I even doubt that she even talked to the doctor. The symptoms persisted. So I went for a series of heart and lung checks, trying to find out why I was still not feeling right. During that period I was diagnosed with mild asthma and treated for it, but the pulmonologist said he doesn't think the SOB and chest tightening is a lung issue. I also had a number of heart checkups--stress test, nuclear stress test, echocardiogram, angiogram, etc. Everything comes back normal.

Fact is I was never able to speak with the electrophysiologist who implanted the pm. Seems that he runs an assembly line and never has a follow-up appointment to talk with the patient. This was all done during COVID times so maybe that was a factor. I'll never know.

Finally a NP who was monitoring my blood pressure got me an appointment with a different electrophysiologist. Lo and behold...... He tells me that when they put in the pm they set it for one of four settings. I don't remember all the names he gave them. But the first setting they call "sedentary," the second I don't remember the name of, the third they call "athletic," and the fourth "Olympic level" or something like that.

I had been placed on the number two setting. I had also been set to have my heart rate set at 60; i.e., my bpm would never fall below 60, which it hasn't.

According to this new ep doctor, these settings can be changed and he is now in the process of working with me to change them to see if we can get me to function better.

So that's my story.