Hi Everyone,

It's been 4 weeks since my pacemaker was replaced and I'm doing pretty good. I want to thank everyone for their good wishes, PM's, emails and prayer's for me. I am so grateful to all of you for thinking of me.

I do have some more healing to do. I over did it when I was able to start using my right arm last week. I wound up irritating my incision and it's not quite healed all the way. I could not figure out why it started hurting so much 2 days ago until I realized that I must have irritated it when I was washing my hair with 2 hands instead of one. I am back to left hand only when shampooing my hair and keeping the right arm down again.

The implant site and incision are extremely sensitive and will be for a while. Nothing can touch it without causing pain. I dressed for the first time last Wednesday and it felt so great but now I am back in my gown for a few more days.

Even though I had the first pacemaker for 11 years, my body knows its a forgein object and is trying to adjust to it. It wants the pacemaker out of there and it is giving me some spasms, twiches and pretty hard pain.

The pacemaker is programmed to kick in if my pulse tries to go lower than 60 beats per minute and I can feel it kick in occasionally so I know it's working. This pacemaker is like a computer that stores my heart activity and in 3 months I will put a device over it and it will transmit all my heart activity by telephone to my doctor. If any problems show up, they will call me and I will go to see the doctor. I will go to his office every 6 months and have a tech check the pacemaker and make any adjustments needed. So, I send the info from home every 6 months and see the doctor every 6 months so it's monitored all year. It's an amazing little device.

The doctor's in the past have been very reluctant to say my heart rhythm problems and low pulse are MS related. There is no data to support this as an MS symptom. Now, I am hearing from my Cardio/Electrophysiolgist that since the problems began when MS became apparent and I had 3 brain stem lesions on my last MRI in 1994, that it is more than likely MS. I guess I will never know for sure.

Thanks again to you all and especially Sandy for keeping everyone posted. She's a great BFF and a very special person.