Hello Everyone! My story...

[Jason]

Hi everyone. My name is Jason (surprised no one had taken that user name before) and I am a 36 y/o male. I was born with a bicuspid aortic valve, that has been monitored since I was two. At my last echo in February, it was noted that my ascending aorta had expanded from 4.5 cm to 5.5cm in the past year, and it was time to schedule a surgery. Also, my bicuspid valve was moderately stenotic and becoming close to very bad. So, at the same time I had the valve replaced. My aortic root was okay, so that was saved and a portion of the aorta was replaced with a dacron sleeve. My valve is now a mechanical valve by carbomedics, a 25 whatever that means.

I had the surgery on March 7th, and was released from the hospital on the 11th. Everything was going great. I started cardiac rehab and was going to the Y and walking the treadmill on the other days of the week, so was feeling great.

Then last Wednesday, I felt my heart skipping a few beats now and then. I laid down for a nap at 2:30 PM and immediately felt it skip, skip, skip and then take off. I was in atrial flutter at 150-155 bpm, although I didn't know to expect it so thought I was having a heart attack and wouldn't make it to the hospital. My family and I (wife and three boys) got the ER, where they monitored me for the next few hours and talked about cardioverting me. Luckily, my heart self-converted about two hours after.

Thursday, at 2:30 PM (just so happens I was laying down for a nap again?) I went into flutter again, so we packed up and went to the ER. This time I was in the hospital overnight, where they started dosing me with Amiodorone and put me on a diltiazam drip. They monitored me overnight and I actually slept as well as I have in a long time. They had me scheduled for a trans-esophogeal echo to confirm no clots followed by a cardioversion, but fortunately at 8 AM my heart converted. I can't really say self-converted as I am now on drug regimens, but it did convert!

We came home Friday, had a good Saturday, and then at midnight on Saturday it took off again. I called the doc on call (happened to be same cardio who admitted me Thursday) and he prescribed a diltiazam pill, and then wait and see. Sure enough, I converted at noon on Sunday at home.

Since Sunday I haven't had any A flutter, which is good. The cardio put me on 800mg of amiodorone until Tuesday, and now am on 200mg per day for a month if that works. I am also on metoprolol (75mg X 2 daily) for slowing heart rate and lowering blood pressure.

Since Tuesday, though, I have had skipped heart beats every time I lay down or try to sleep. Actually, it feels like my heart starts double pumping, followed by a pause. It does this almost every beat (thump, thump.....thump, thump.....thump, thump....) although sometimes it goes back to a single beat. Very odd. Cardio said I was feeling compensatory pauses and it was fine as long as it didn't bother me too much. If it bothered me too much, come in to the ER and they could monitor and see what was needed. So far, I have been able to finally get to sleep through it, although it isn't easy.

Anyway, I have been reading the posts here and wanted to contribute. If anyone else has had the experience of skipped beats when laying down, let me know. Good to see you, and look forward to being part of the community.

Jason

 

[Jeff Edmonton]

Hey Jason,

Glad to virtually meet you, I have experienced the skipping heart beat when laying down but it goes away for me. It kind of worried me as well but it did not end up in flutter, you need to stop taking naps at 2:30 pm!
The 25 is the size of the valve they put in us, 25 mm is an inch in diameter. I had the same size of valve inserted into my aortic valve.
My surgery was on February 25th and have an appointment April 11th to see my surgeon. My biggest issue has been surviving this brutal winter, I have not been pushing myself with exercise except for long slow walks.
Hopefully everything will calm down for you and your recovery will become normal.
Good luck to you.

 

[Jason]

Thanks, Jeff. My follow up with my surgeon is on April 18th, so our timelines are similar. I know that I need to give it some time to settle down, but it is hard to be very patient when you can't sleep very well. That amplifies everything, I think. I have been really happy with my recovery other than the rhythm, though.

Cardiac rehab is great; do you have that available to you? I go three times a week and really like being able to push my exercise a little bit with the cords attached and a lot of people watching my progress. It sure gives me some confidence to push it up a notch that I don't think I would otherwise have. I hear you on the winter; we are getting rain today on top of our snow pack, and they are talking about possibly another 6-8 inches of snow this weekend. I am so ready for some green grass!

Good luck to you in your continued recovery as well, Jeff!

 

[Jeri]

Hi everyone. My name is Jason (surprised no one had taken that user name before) and I am a 36 y/o male. I was born with a bicuspid aortic valve, that has been monitored since I was two. At my last echo in February, it was noted that my ascending aorta had expanded from 4.5 cm to 5.5cm in the past year, and it was time to schedule a surgery. Also, my bicuspid valve was moderately stenotic and becoming close to very bad. So, at the same time I had the valve replaced. My aortic root was okay, so that was saved and a portion of the aorta was replaced with a dacron sleeve. My valve is now a mechanical valve by carbomedics, a 25 whatever that means.

I had the surgery on March 7th, and was released from the hospital on the 11th. Everything was going great. I started cardiac rehab and was going to the Y and walking the treadmill on the other days of the week, so was feeling great.

Then last Wednesday, I felt my heart skipping a few beats now and then. I laid down for a nap at 2:30 PM and immediately felt it skip, skip, skip and then take off. I was in atrial flutter at 150-155 bpm, although I didn't know to expect it so thought I was having a heart attack and wouldn't make it to the hospital. My family and I (wife and three boys) got the ER, where they monitored me for the next few hours and talked about cardioverting me. Luckily, my heart self-converted about two hours after.

Thursday, at 2:30 PM (just so happens I was laying down for a nap again?) I went into flutter again, so we packed up and went to the ER. This time I was in the hospital overnight, where they started dosing me with Amiodorone and put me on a diltiazam drip. They monitored me overnight and I actually slept as well as I have in a long time. They had me scheduled for a trans-esophogeal echo to confirm no clots followed by a cardioversion, but fortunately at 8 AM my heart converted. I can't really say self-converted as I am now on drug regimens, but it did convert!

We came home Friday, had a good Saturday, and then at midnight on Saturday it took off again. I called the doc on call (happened to be same cardio who admitted me Thursday) and he prescribed a diltiazam pill, and then wait and see. Sure enough, I converted at noon on Sunday at home.

Since Sunday I haven't had any A flutter, which is good. The cardio put me on 800mg of amiodorone until Tuesday, and now am on 200mg per day for a month if that works. I am also on metoprolol (75mg X 2 daily) for slowing heart rate and lowering blood pressure.

Since Tuesday, though, I have had skipped heart beats every time I lay down or try to sleep. Actually, it feels like my heart starts double pumping, followed by a pause. It does this almost every beat (thump, thump.....thump, thump.....thump, thump....) although sometimes it goes back to a single beat. Very odd. Cardio said I was feeling compensatory pauses and it was fine as long as it didn't bother me too much. If it bothered me too much, come in to the ER and they could monitor and see what was needed. So far, I have been able to finally get to sleep through it, although it isn't easy.

Anyway, I have been reading the posts here and wanted to contribute. If anyone else has had the experience of skipped beats when laying down, let me know. Good to see you, and look forward to being part of the community.

Jason

Hi Jason,

I had a similar arrthymia (sp) in 2009. This is actually before my regurge became severe. I would go into these irregular beats while I was sitting or laying bed, especially if I was laying on my left side. The holter showed about 6 to 8,000 pvc's, pac and sometimes runs of svt. I was already on lopressor 100mg bid and Losartan 100 mg once a day. I went through several cardiologists before I found one that figured out the correct dosage and meds for this. But during this time, I had more irregular beats than a peaceful sinus rhythm. But my present cardio, decreased the lopressor to 25 mg 4 times a day, kept the losartan at 100mg, added norvasc 10 mg and added magnesium ox 400mg. This did the trick!!! So after suffering with these irregular beats for 4 mo, I had finally found relief. Then about a year later, the aortic regurge worsened to severe and an aortic aneurysm was noted and here I am today awaiting AVR on April 20th. Now I feel some occasional flutter but it doesn't bother me after going through all of that. When the pvcs were that severe, it actually made me cough. So I did a lot of coughing. I called it my "PVC cough". I truly believe that reducing the lopressor and adding the mag ox made the difference. I don't know if any of this helps, but this is what happened to me. Good luck with your recovery and God bless.

Jeri

 

[Greg a]

Jason, a heart felt WELCOME to our OHS family glad you found us are getting some of the information that you are seeking and there is swealth of knowledge here for the future I had Aflutter and tachacardia when laying down and now have an ICD and am paced about 25% of the time (cardiac resyncronization) and have been shocked /revived twice but my wife says I have always been an overachiever:angel:

 

[Bina]

we definitely need a sub forum for the "arrhythmia crowd".
I take Metoprolol 3 or 4 times a day in small doses to control my spurts of SVT and PAC activity.

 

[Missy]

Welcome to VR, Jason. Sorry you are having trouble. Hope you get it all solved soon.

 

[buncle]

Welcome Jason.Alot of us have post op arrhythmias.I had a-fib 1 week post-op and spent several days in the hospital.These should start slowing down and hopefully correct themselves as time goes by and your heart heals.Your heart went through alot and it takes time for it to settle down.I think this an area that Drs. should alert their patients to.It scares the heck out of you when arrhythmias rear their ugly head.It would be alot easier to handle it if we had some warning.Hang in there it will get better.

 

[Jason]

Thanks, Everyone! It is good to hear how many others have gone through a similar experience. My wife said that there was about 15 seconds about arrhythmia's inside of a 45 minute video they had us watch before discharge. Considering how many OHS patients have this, and the even higher percentage of people with valve replacements, it seems that t would be a bigger talking point that might justify a few minutes, at least. It might be that my memory isn't that good, but it sure wasn't brought out as a big deal at discharge.

I don't know the nationwide stats, but my nurse when I was back in said that they generally see 25-30% of all OHS patients back with A Flutter or A Fib. For me, it seems like the drugs are controlling that aspect now, and over the last day it seems that my heart is starting to control the skipped beats. Yesterday when I laid down (nap and night time) I started have skipped beats and compensatory pauses, but after about 5 minutes I was back to normal pulse. That made sleep attainable, which is very good!

Thanks for all the warm welcomes, and all the information on this forum!

 

[ALCapshaw2]

Yep, 25-30% having some sort of arrhythmia following sounds pretty familiar.

Several have reported A-Fib after exercising (and some say that it goes away if they 'ramp up again') but may or may not return as you 'cool down'.

You may want to ask your Cardiologist about using SOTALOL which seems to help control A-Fib for many with few side-effects (vs. Amiodarone). I'm surprised more Doctors do not use this drug more often.

'AL Capshaw'

 

[RunMartin]

I had irregular heart beats from about 2 month to 6 month post op. They eventually went away but they could feel uncomfortable when they occurred. I had a 24 hour Holter monitor done to check there was nothing that needed medical intervention.

 

[drivetopless]

Hi, Jason-
I went to the ER with afib 2 weeks after my valve replacement. I clocked over 200 bpm in the ER with PVCs. Resting was 130-150bpm. I stayed the hospital 10 days while they figured out the right meds to control my heart beat and treated me for CHF.

I'm now 12 weeks post op. My afib is now just tachycardia. I'm on sotalol, metropolol, and cardizem. They help but I was still having the palpitations, especially when reclining or laying donw at night. Like Jeri, I started taking 400 mg of chelated Mg and experienced a NOTICABLE reduction in the palpitations.

It sounds like the meds are working for you, but if you still have issues ongoing with palpitations you might want to ask your doc about adding Mg supplements. My cardiologist didn't perscribe it, but he was open to me giving it a try. I'm glad I did.

 

[Jason]

Thanks, Al, Martin and Tracy. I will ask the doc about sotolal when I go in next time. As of right now, the A-flutter/A-Fib is under control, and I haven't had any of that since last Sunday. However, every time I lay down I still get the strange skipping heart beat. It double pumps, then skips. double pumps, then skips. Sometimes my heart will cure itself, and others it will keep doing it for quite a while. I am gathering this is fairly common, so not calling my doc or anything at this point.

I finally got my INR above 2 today, Yay! It was 2.7, so now for four days of same dose and then a recheck. I am hoping that we are finally getting it figured out. At least now I am above 2, which is a good thing mentally for me.

My only other complaint is that my sternum is still popping, or maybe clicking is a better descriptor. I am four weeks out from my surgery today, and it still moves and clicks with me. I have been told that this is normal as well, and that some people can take several months to stop that process. Again, I want it to be done now, but I have to remember I don't control it.

Tracy, is your heart beating fast, but in rhythm now? I am on metoprolol and amiodorone, and my heart rate is as low as it has ever been at 58-65 resting heart rate. In fact, it is hard for me to get the rate up even with exercise at cardiac rehab, and my blood pressure tends to stay low as well. It seems quite odd, but I suppose that the drugs are keeping it from elevating. I hope yours is working out now!