Basically, according to my cardiologist I was slowly dying before I had my pacemaker installed last June of 2020 at age 72. Luckily, I have been on Medicare since age 65 so this was covered mostly by that insurance. However, two days ago I thought I might be able to stop taking furosemide because of the pacemaker working so well.
Before the pacemaker was installed in June of 2020 I was taking 160 mg. of furosemide (lasix) which is quite a lot because I was trying to stay alive and not drown in my lungs from fluid. (Lasix is a diuretic which causes you to urinate a lot.) So, you don't want to be taking this at midnight or you will be up every 1 hour or so urinating if you do. So, I usually want to take my last dose of the day around 4 pm so it's much easier to deal with things like sleeping without having to urinate so much.
Well. I tried going off Lasix(furosemide) two days ago and that turned out to be a mistake. I had been down to 40 mg a day which is one pill for me. And I thought it would be easier on my kidneys not to have to take this medicine at all since I now had a pacemaker. However, this didn't work.
However, often doctors will prescribe Spironolactone but within a few years this drug will go sideways for you (it does for everyone at some point) and this almost killed me because I stopped taking it when the really bad side effects started and i couldn't get an appointment with my cardiologist soon enough because he was in too many emergency heart surgeries and I almost died before this was corrected with Lasix. So, it took me about 1 to 2 months to recover and i missed a trip to Ireland, Scotland and England with my wife and two daughters that I likely cannot replace because my daughters are now 25 and 32 years old and have more and more their own lives away from my wife and I.
However, the good news is that I survived this and last summer I had a pacemaker installed and I have a whole new lease on life because of this.
But, what I'm saying here is that even with a pacemaker installed you might not be able to stop taking Lasix if you are on it. But, you likely can significantly reduce the dose you are on because your heart is going to work so much more efficiently with a pacemaker.
For me, the pacemaker is an extreme difference because first I had an irregular heartbeat and I also had one chamber of my heart not beating correctly. The pacemaker with 3 wires into my heart corrected everything perfectly. both the irregular heartbeat and the chamber not beating properly.
When you get a pacemaker installed though it is very important not to raise your left arm (if the pacemaker is installed to your left) above your head for a month or two because your body needs to seat these wires into place before you do that. But, after a month or two you can do all the movements likely you did before.
I know of a man (without his doctors permission) who just hopped on his horse and starting riding his horse again because he felt so good with a pacemaker and had it installed in his 60s and lived until his 90s.
He had a cattle ranch and this gave him a new lease on life.
And if there was no Covid i likely would be skiing right now at Mt. Shasta Ski park. But, my son in law told me about how in Austria they opened one ski lift area and it caused 300 people to die there from coronavirus.
So, likely I'm not going to be going on ski lifts for this reason this year. But, I still can ski on mountaineering metal edged skis on Mt. Shasta.
The real trick with furosemide (lasix) is you have to take potassium with it or you will die within a couple of weeks. This is why doctors usually start people on spironolactone first until it goes sideways. Because if you forget to take your potassium you are just dead within 2 weeks.
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