I am a 50 year old healthy woman with no past history of any illness. I haven't been sick or taken any medication since the early 70s. Last month (early July) I was bitten by something. The bite swelled and I had a fever with it. The bite went away and I suffered no more symptoms until August 6th when I suffered cardiac arrest. At the time of the arrest my K+ level was 1.9. When they brought me back I was in 1st degree block. For 4 days I went into v-tach and v- fib and was shocked over 80 times. My cardiac enzymes were normal. Finally a Convertor/defib was inserted. My K+ was brought back up and nephrology was called in. I have no history of kidney disease and they found no illness. I was fortunate to be in a facility that had a 3D CT scan. My arteries show no plaque, the heart muscle is nomal and better than a 50 year old heart. I did test positive for Lyme disease, the titer was 8 times the threshold. Infection Docs don't feel that this episode was caused by the Lyme disease and the cardiologist are stumped. Since I am over the crisis no one wants to look any deeper. Could this episode be due to the Lyme disease or should I keep looking for answers. Any help you can give me would be appreciated.
Posted by nellypointis (Member # 1719) on :
Did I understand the Q correctly? COULD THIS BE CAUSED BY LYME???
In one short word: YES!
I had years of incresingly frequent ventricular extra-systoles (every few beats-all day-every day) + episodes of fibrilation and arrhythmia + malaisey feelings all the time (feeling faint)+very low BP and unexplained low potassium-doctors said: "it's nothing". That was prior Lyme diagnosis.
A few weeks later it was a different story:"it would be irresponsible to NOT insert a pacemaker".
I refused the pacemaker, took the abx and after a few months no more ventricular extra-systoles, still strange feelings around my heart at times but nothing like before treatment.
Cardiologists totally baffled, kept saying: what else are you taking besides abx? Nothing!
Hope you get treatment for your Lyme, it is a very common cause of hearts behaving very strangely
Nelly
Posted by jimsmissy (Member # 7796) on :
Thanks for the info. They had to insert the pacemaker because they couldn't keep me alive. I was being treated with resefan but am allergic and now on Doxycly.