Meniere disease and a lazy heartbeat

Do you feel you would continue to fall with a pacemaker installed? Why? Isn't it likely that the pacemaker might help to oxygenate you more than currently, or more reliably, and this might help your vestibular response.

If the worse comes to the worst, you could always fashion a wrap or vest to wear that has padding in the area over your pacemaker. Even so, I am not aware that his is an historically great problem for all people with pacemakers, that being that they have to worry about inadvertent contact with objects and their pacemakers.

I'm not diminishing your concerns. I would just like to see more of your rationale that drives your concern. It would help.

I was told by a heart specialist that a pacemaker would stop my drop attacks because he thought that they were caused by my heart missing from time to time a beat ; this being the cause of my fainting and falling.
But I am not fainting when I have a drop attack, am perfectly conscious that I have to take a pill to stop it, and my ear specialist tells me that drop attacks and rotational vertigo that accompanies it have nothing to do with the heart.
It explains my hesitation to agree to a pacemaker.

I know a retired professor who only found out his heart had been in flutter for an unknown length of time when he went in for something unrelated to his heart. He had been an active hiker, kayaker, and cyclist, both he and his wife.

When I had my second bout of atrial fibrillation, around six or seven weeks after the first, and had gone to the ER on both occasions because it was symptomatic and obvious, and because it was novel and frightening, I couldn't get my breath. Only that one time. On all other occasions of entering AF, they being many over the next four years, I never felt breathless. Just the thumping and heaving in my left chest wall.

I agree with you, for what it's worth, that you are unlikely to have a heart problem THAT CAUSES YOU TO FALL OR TO FAINT. I'm going by what you have revealed. You lose your balance, you're not faint, you are conscious of the fall, and you don't faint upon impact with the floor. You just fall. That's not your heart.
However, I have not seen your Holter Monitor or an EKG that might show a problem with your heart. That may still be a concern for your cardiologist. I don't see it, but he/she might. You need to pin this suggestion down, that you need a pacemaker.

I don't know squat about Meniere's, but I do know of it. That expert should know of literature that describes any relationship Meniere's might have with sudden falls. Whatever he/she suggests is what I would try. Loooonnnggg before a pacemaker.

Thank you very much for your explanations and suggestions.
One EKG showed no problem and the Doppler showed, over 22 hours, a missing beat of one second or two from time to time.
I am going to follow your advice and ask for more thorough investigation before I make a decision.
Ménière is a disease of the inner ear, so it does not affect my heart. But it does tire me a lot ( heavy medication and episodes of rotational vertigo’s that leave you exhausted combined with constant tinnitus) that’s why my GP sent me to a cardiologist to check if there was not an additional problem.

Why to do you like what I wrote ?

Wearing a holter monitor would help tease out if you falling has anything to do with your heart. You could record the exact time of your falls and then the cardio doc can look at your holter recording and see if there is any relationship. It seems a rather easy way to determine if your heart is involved.
In fact I cannot believe the cardio would install a pacemaker without using a holter to make sure it is heart related. It seems to me that your Ménière's is a possible candidate. But further testing is likely to reveal the source. I would want proof either way.

I "like" what you wrote because
* I want to encourage you to share your experiences. I learn so much by reading other peoples's health issues and experiences.
* at age 81, I could wind up with the same issues that you and others have.
* Doctors don't always give the correct advice, and some appear to only want to be "pill-pushers." Real-life experiences, from unbiased peers are always appreciated.
Good luck.

I remember in the late 1990s my father was in Chicago sick and living by himself. He had the "runs"real bad and was getting weak refusing to call an ambulance. I called my brother in St. Louis and said either you drive right now and take him to a doc or I catch the next flight out to Chicago. Either way it was about the same time for me to get there as him. My brother took him to a walk in clinic and they immediately gave him fluids and sent him to a hospital. My father was severely dehydrated. At the hospital a cardio wanted to put a pacemaker in my father. I happened to work at large university medical school hospital. A friend of mine at the hospital was an EP researcher and specialist. He wrote books on this stuff. I called him and he was in Boston with about 12 other of the top EP researchers in the country in a meeting. He said fax me (we didn't have the ability in late 1990s to email stuff like that) the ECG and I will present it to the group. Later he called me back and said that everybody agreed my father did not need a pacemaker as this was just a result of dehydration. This doc said he had seen 20 year old athletes with the same rhythm my father was in from dehydration. So I told my brother to tell that doc forget the pacemaker. The guy was furious and pitched and fit and yelled at my bother that father some day will be back to get a pacemaker. He lived to 86 y.o. and never needed a pacemaker.

Thank you so much for both replies. You’re comforting me in my decision to ask for a longer period of observation of my heart beat.
Both cardio I saw said that my heart beat was strong for a person of my age (82). The one who installs pacemakers concluded the visit by telling me that I should wear one as an insurance against future needs. He saw the first EKG - missing a beat from time to time - as a first sign of it and told me not to wait for more than 3 months before getting one.

Thank you for your explanation.
I agree completely with you that peer experience is as valuable sometimes as medical opinion.
I am 82 and paid a heavy price when for more than 40 years I was misdiagnosed.
I am grateful to Mayo Clinic to give us the opportunity of exchanging our experiences and asking for assistance.