NO Heart Surgery Thanks To PadACheek & APAP!

[lucynethel1998]

I posted the following PROOF today on one of my cpap support groups. I now have PROOF my own personal diagnosis is sound:

Thanks to this group, and Karen at PadACheek, I now have had 4 straight days of GREAT sleep & clarity. In the past 45 years that has never happened. I will post the software results from my Pulse Oximeter I bought also. Before CPAP AND after last night. Stunning differences! On my Respironics report, ignore the beginning hour or 2 to the right of the photo, that was just me trying to dial in leaks on my new Hybrid mask I did NOT use. ALL my numbers the past 4 days are using my Quattro Full Face and assorted products by PadACheek. Last night was simply amazing. For the first time I used the mask "Liner by padacheek. And just look at the numbers. I never woke up a single time for the first time in my 5 weeks of apap! What woke me up however was a doozy. Not sure what happened but thought I was having another heart attack and just got up and was fine? I am going to have my wife cut the breathing hole tonight to uncover my mouth. As is, it allows my nose to air but covers my mouth so need to carefully enlarge it by elongating that cutout. I am most encouraged by the charts on my before & after graphs/reports from the pulse oximeter I bought that records & saves the data. As a heart patient it is critical and it is what I bought to either confirm OR deny my heart problems are a DIRECT RESULT of sleep apnea. Based upon these results I am NOT having heart surgery. It proves to me what I had suspected all along. My ONLY "events" of a racing pulse occurs when sleeping and when NOT using my APAP machine... The importance of the Pulse Oximeter is that it confirms my hunch that the pulse racing was caused ONLY when having apnea events. This "hunch" led me to ask for a sleep study. That study confirmed moderate apnea. This was ALL figured out by me, NOT all my doctors! I am so frustrated that they want to open me up and do heart surgery and nobody even figured out any of this????



I simply can NOT believe that my cardiologist remarked to my wife the following. There is simply something WRONG here with these numbers (referring to a 1 night result of wearing a Holter Monitor on Election day). You just sat all day watching election results and not a single event. Yet once you went to bed & sleep, your heart had endless events of speeding to up to 183 beats per minute while sleeping! Something seems wrong with that." HIS WORDS to my wife & myself! He then explained he needed to perform an ablation to burn out my hearts sinus node and implant a Pacemaker to get my heart to beat again and hold it down to a safe speed. I told him to pound sand and here we are. I did all my own research and below is proof I figured out all I need to know. I am now completely comfortable with MY diagnosis! On top of that, after 5 weeks (today) of apap, my blood pressure is also down 30-40 points! What does THAT tell you? I simply can't remember waking up so AWAKE, so alive, so rested. NO pain on my face either thanks to Karen at padacheek. *****Please note that last night on the event showing my pulse drop to just 20 beats per minute was in the first 10-20 minutes while taping it onto my finger & getting a good signal. It was NOT my pulse! I was getting connected. I will now refuse any heart surgery unless my health changes based upon MY tests that at least substantiate my "condition"! ***** I feel like I was reborn.....

See attached photos in order of progress:
BEFORE APAP:




AFTER APAP (Last Night)

[lfreese]

That is scary to think that the doctor couldn't figure out your "heart problem" any better than that. When I developed a-flutter my cardio doc immediately sent me for a sleep study as she was pretty certain apnea caused the flutter. She was right!
Glad you are doing so well. Good luck.

[bap40]

A person I know told me this story of what happened to her late husband who WAS a doctor. Not too long after starting therapy he passed away. There was an autopsy done that showed he had, had a heart attack. Apparently he had apnea for years and years before he decided he might need a sleep study. His heart had already been too damaged for therapy to help him.

Sometimes, I have found in dealing with medical people that if they get one idea in their head that seems to be an answer that seems to fit, they stop looking for any other possible causes and unfortunately it is up to us, the patients, to keep these docs on track. Not right but can happen in this day and age of time.

I have a disabled husband who has had brain tumor removals and now has seizures and a few other issues and I HAVE to keep track of it all so I do all kinds of research on different treatments that come and go. I have to make sure non of his drugs might have reactions that can mimic other things or interact with one or more of his meds. My 25 yr old daughter has medical issues and has for about 4 yrs now. Despite many tests, visits to the UofM in Minneapolis and a 2 week visit to Mayo in Rochester she still does not have a diagnosis. We are actually going back for another round of tests mid March to see some different docs in different fields of medicine to try again for a diagnosis. So my life is spent with dealing with doctors and I have learned a whole lot on how to deal with or even argue with some to make sure what needs to be done is done. Not the way it should be but is.

[lucynethel1998]

To me? It is actually criminal! Another part of the story is equally important. After several mini strokes and finally a heart attack last year while in the hospital, the Hospital cardiologist told me I needed an angiogram and probably several stints to save my life. I asked, "based on WHAT"? He curtly responded, , "well because you are HERE for one reason"! His smart ass attitude had me sign out & tell him what I thought of him. He went so far as to assign a psychiatrist onto me to document that I may have a death wish! I was livid and nearly took that hospital apart, but regained enough composure to just leave and get myself home....
After 6 months my primary care physician actually asked how my heart was doing! I laughed and said, "well you tell ME"! He asked, well aren't you seeing a heart doctor? I could not believe my ears. Does ANYONE have their act together? So he asks if I want a 2nd opinion, I say sure. Enter my new and 2nd INDEPENDENT cardiologist. Now he does 1 single test, the Holter Monitor, then an echo-cardiogram (my 4th! but run up that bill). He refuses to even glance at all the color graphs & charts I paid to have printed out showing my blood pressure readings takes 6 times per day for 9 months now. Says he "pretty much has my condition dialed in"....
Yep, now I need the ablation & Pacemaker. But guess what else turns up. I go online to look up my hospital doctor who is from Kosovo by the way. Now here is a surprise. He specializes in heart catheterization, you know, angiograms & stints. oh SHOCK! No wonder I needed that to stay alive...

And my new cardiologist? Well you will be stunned to learn HIS specialty is (are you ready) Pacemaker surgery...

I am no longer going to wast my time with ANY of them. I have done all my research online to have to ask my primary care doctor for the sleep study and fought to get apap to replace the cheapest cpap etc. I have been the ONLY one correct in this nightmare and it was me who figured out the root cause of my problem and what was even going on. Now I also have multiple blood clots in both lungs which I understand is from my heart racing to over 185 beats per minute (most likely I am told?) that will not let my heart pump any blood after a point. This is guess to have allowed blood to pool and create clots that went into my lungs. I have to take Coumadin for the rest of my life and will do so since my 11 year old daughter ultimately died from blood clots in her lungs but from a different reason (long & tragic story). I just have no more use for any of my doctors. And especially when I wrote a 1 page letter to my primary care doctor showing him my suspicions of both cardiologists trying to each give me their own specialized surgeries! His comment? "You need to find a way to condense your story to one paragraph, I don't have time to real all this"! I really no longer have time to wast with them either.....And they have taken every penny we have. Between this and my wife's Cancer, Makes me long for "Socialized medicine".