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Electric shocks

Kelly Marie Angel
Hi i was admitted to hospital a few days ago (am home now) with chest pains I won't go into medical details but the cardiac doctor who saw me said they want to put me to sleep then deliberately shock me to bring my heart back into rhythm  now I've always tried to avoid shocks so was wondering is this really a good idea? I know it's DC from a bank of condensers and not 50 cycle mains but all the same I'm not keen
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    Hi Kelly


    Glad you're out of hospital now! 


    My father had the same thing done a few years back. He was involved in a motorcycle accident where the bike came to a sudden halt at speed, he went over the handlebars and the bike followed through and hit him on the chest as he was lying on the ground. The impact was enough to knock his heart out of rhythm (so the doc said) so any physical exertion would result in him becoming out of breath and exhausted very quickly, even walking up stairs was a chore! 

    He went into hospital and had his heart stopped and then restarted to put it back into rhythm and he's been right as rain ever since! 


    BTW can you email or PM me please as I have something for you... ?


    Lisa
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    I had a heart irregularity in 2003. Coffee was my drug of choice and was drinking a mug full before leaving home for work, on arrival at work whilst waiting for my computer to boot up and throughout the day at meetings and between meetings and on arrival back home and during the evening. If I went without for any period Imwould start craving and shaking. Sometimes my heart would be racing which I ignored. The whilst away with SWMBO in a nice hotel in Cheltenham I had a big event of sweating and heart pounding and feeling awful during the night. I got the boss to drive me to A&E and found myself wired up to a heart machine with an irregular heart beat. Boss very upset at missing a sumptuous breakfast in the hotel and reminds me of this selfish behaviour from time to time. After this. I went cold turkey no coffee, no coco cola etc. I get my maintenance dose fro tea and I fall off the wagon and have a slice of coffe cake no walnuts when  I visit HM at Sandrigham other than that I have been clean since 2003.


    I would think Chris Pearson would be the best forum member to answer your question as he has a fair bit of experience in doing periodic inspections on non electrical installations.


    Kellie best follow the advice of the doctors rather than us electrical badgers even those of us with an expired First Aid certificate who have had the odd dabble and have a 1 out of 3 success rate in CPR.
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    That's very interesting I drink a lot of coffee when I'm staying at my girlfriends place so maybe that's what triggered my problem although I was told I've got an enlarged heart and also a weak right side of heart so it's probably a combination of it all quite scary really
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    I have a few friends who due to various problems have had their heart shocked back into rhythm, all successfully. 


    Tony Blair had something similar done when he was PM.


    Good luck and I hope you are better soon.


    Kevin
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    Hi Kelly, there are lots of examples of the use of controlled electricity. I have recently had pulsed radio frequency therapy to calm down a set of overactive nerves. Four probes inserted into my abdomen and ten minutes of 3mA 20 kHz pulses. Did the trick, pain free for 3 months.

    My wife had probes inserted into her heart to shock her heart into the right rhythm. Go for it. 

    David
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    John Peckham:

    I would think Chris Pearson would be the best forum member to answer your question as he has a fair bit of experience in doing periodic inspections on non electrical installations.




    Save of course that this is a matter of electricity!.


    Well, I have experienced it too and it didn't half put the wind up me - why would a 50-something's heart go out of rhythm in the middle of the night.


    Skip this bit if you feel faint!


    So I got up for a pee in the night (as older men do) and I wondered whether I could stand for long enough to finish. ? I got back into bed and felt my pulse, which was diddly-diddly-diddly instead of a steady 60 - 70 bpm. So off we went to the hospital in the middle of the night. After all the tests, it was concluded that I might benefit from being shocked back into rhythm. Fortunately, before anybody did anything, my heart beat returned to normal. It has gone haywire again, but always temporarily, and probably due to stressful events. (I don't drink coffee, but I do like tea during the day.)


    If you want to know more, read on, but it is a bit technical.


    So normally the heart beats in a steady rhythm under the influence of its natural "pacemaker" - the sinus node. If you start exercising, it makes the heart beat faster. However it can go wrong and you can end up in atrial fibrillation when the muscles of the first chambers in the heart (the atria) don't contract together. Fortunately, that doesn't kill you because the ventricles, the main chambers of the heart have their own rhythm. There are, however, two problems. The lesser is that the heart doesn't respond so well to exercise - it doesn't speed up as it should, so you feel knackered, or short of breath, or a combination of the two. Trust me, I have experienced it when out for a run (normally 4 miles.) If you are less fit, AF could impair your ability to do normal daily activities, in which case it needs to be sorted.


    The other problem is that if the left atrium is not contracting properly, the blood can get stuck in the corners. Moving blood is great, but static blood can clot. What you don't want is clotted blood there, which decides to detach itself and shoot off upward 'cos you may end up with a stroke. So the second reason for treating AF is to reduce the increased risk of a stroke.


    I have mentioned this in the old forum. So you get a shock and go into ventricular fibrillation, which is rapidly fatal 'cos your blood isn't pumped anywhere. If somebody can get to you with a defibrillator, happy days! Isn't it odd: one shock can kill, another type can revive. ?


    Back to the OP. Kelly, you could wait and see (as I have done) or drug treatment might help, which is obviously a matter for you to discuss with your doctors. As JP has suggested, lifestyle changes my help. I suppose that at the end of the day, it's a risk analysis, but I have long believed that treatment should be given only where the expectation of benefit exceeds the risk of any complications.


    HTH.

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    Chris


    My scary event was in the early hours of the morning to. I did have a part time job once where the perceived wisdom was you you get more sudden deaths in the early hours of the morning than at any other time. One of the other gifts of wisdom handed down from the old school was a full moon produced more wild and extreme behaviour than at other times. I thought that was BLX but as I progressed to and gained experience and became old school I thought the same.


    There you are Kellie you can get expert advice on any subject on this forum. Trust in the doctors and get the treatment you need. Thereafter a life style change will help you make old bones with the added advantage of feeling smug and self righteous and lecturing others on their failings.
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    Thankyou all for your replies it's Been very interesting and informative I will almost certainly go through with the shock treatment although the thought of it is very scary but it will be nice to have some of my old energy back . I doubt if anything will cure my tired heart but if I can at least partly fix it then that will be good cheers all Kelly x
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    I suffer from AF and had to be shocked back in to rhythm. I was sedated but awake. They told me that I wouldn’t remember much of the procedure but actually I remembered quite a bit. Still, I can reassure you that I felt no pain. 

    In the modern world we are often amazed at the technology all around us but pay scant regard to the miracle of technology that our body is. Perhaps if we became more aware of its wonders we would stop assaulting it in the way we often do.

    in any event, I am sure that all will go well for you and I wish you a speedy recovery, oh, and keep the posts coming!
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    I spent the morning at Daughter's house carefully dismantling some wainscotting in the hall so that I could tackle the last of the downstairs socket rewire. What's that got to do with electric shocks? Nothing, 'cos I practised safe isolation.


    If medical stuff makes you queasy, go and read a different thread!


    I knew that the cables exited the back box at 3 o'clock and I was hoping to find some capping, but no, some b'stard had mortared them in so I had to get out the SDS chisel and expose them the hard way. By early afternoon, they were free. ?


    Unsurprisingly, my throat began to feel a bit dry with all that dust, but it was as if the front was sticking to the back. Water didn't help much. By them my eyelids were quite swollen.


    So I locked up and went off to A&E to get treatment for my allergic reaction. NB, the time to seek help is whilst you still can! ?


    So you are still wondering what this has to do with electric shocks? Well, they did an ecg didn't they. The atrial flutter (not quite the same as fibrillation) is back and now I have to get it treated. Which is where electricity comes in! ?

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