A medical story for the forum: [View all]

[PCIntern]

I’m not so much of a narcissist that I feel compelled to post my medical issues online because they are uninteresting for the most part, but I have an experience I wish to share because it may help others in several ways.

To make a very long history short, I have been on blood pressure and cholesterol meds for 30+ years and am extremely well-controlled. I never miss a dose and routinely see my primary doc who is a cardiologist whom I’ve attended for 40+ years. For a senior citizen I’m pretty spry and have no serious complaints worth mentioning and am happy about that.

So at my last visit, the doc suggests that I wear a heart monitor for a week and I reluctantly agreed even though I knew I’d find it annoying. So I did it and mailed it back.

I get a call a few days later from the doc and he tells me that everything looked well as expected BUT there were four missed heartbeats with a three second interval until the next beat. He thought I should see an MD electrophysiologist to evaluate this and perhaps I might need a pacemaker. I instantly reacted and mentioned to him that in my 47 clinical years, I did not know a single individual who was asymptomatic who needed a pacemaker. He told me to just call this guy who is his secondary referral because his main guy just received a hip replacement and was way backed up. So I did as I was told.

A week later I arrived at the doctor’s office and was placed in an exam room. The doc came in, barely shook hands and proceeded to tell me, without any preamble, that I absolutely required a pacemaker and it absolutely had to be placed within a month or I could have a fatal catastrophe. So of course, I asked what type of catastrophe was I facing. His reply was that I could be driving a car, pass out, and kill myself or others I then told him that in my lifetime I have never once been light-headed or fainted and I don’t even get seasick on the roughest ocean.

He dismissed that statement out of hand and reiterated some research which I interpreted as gabble degook false statistics. Again to make a long story short, whatever I said was deemed unimportant including risks of complications . He told me his office would “reach out” to me to schedule the operation.

I left very angry, no, outraged. I called my doc and told him what happened and how this guy had decided a priori that I was getting this and he was doing it. My doc told me that I should not return to this specialist because I was angry with him and told me that he would call his primary guy and get me in. Which he did.

So I go to this fellow who takes a history, we have a ten minute discussion and he then says to me that I absolutely do not need a pacemaker, that the wave forms including that which is controlled by my vagus nerve are fine and at least one of the four beats at issue is almost certainly an artifact involving the leads of the monitor and otherwise there is essentially no cause for concern. I won’t bore you with the other details but you get the picture.

The moral of the story is this: I have never refused medical intervention in my lifetime because everything up until this point made perfect sense, but when something didn’t seem right, I followed my instincts. I had no symptoms and a serious intervention was carelessly prescribed because the first doc either didn’t care, needed to make his hospital numbers look better, or profit.

The punch line is that 3 1/2 weeks following the visit with the initial doc his office called to set up the surgery. I said, “ Great…doc told me that it positively had to be done within a month so there are only three days left. Does he have an opening?” The receptionist, after a long pause replied that he did not. I then told her that I was calling the funeral home to make arrangements. When she didn’t reply I told her that that was a joke, as was her boss, and that I was seeking other opinions” and hung up.

To sum up: I feel great and my job is to outlive all my enemies. If something doesn’t make sense to you, don’t assume that the subject material is beyond your scope of understanding. Follow your gut until you’re satisfied. Thanks for reading and stay well everyone!!