At the beginning of the year it was announced that the 3G network was going to be shut down here in Texas. At the time I didn’t think about it because I didn’t have anything 3G… or so I thought. I did not think about my little transmitter to my pacemaker. This little box sends over data about my heart and pacemaker to a clinic and if there is any red flags they notify my cardiologist who looks closer at the data and if he thinks this is something out of the ordinary for me, they contact me. This was very useful when one of my lead got dislodged a month after placement. They notified me 12 hours after it happened and another 12 hours later it was already put back in place.

I never think about this device unless I am travelling. Otherwise it is just laying in the window next to my bed. But a couple of weeks ago I noticed a little book symbol that popped up in the window. Usually it is a battery symbol and an OK symbol that shows. So I looked in the instruction book about the symbol and it said connection problem and told me to restart the device. So I did and it worked for a couple of days. Then the device and I had a little fight about this for almost a month. During the entire time of this month I never thought of that it was the 3G network that was shut down. But finally I sent an email to Biotronik asking what the problem was. I also sent my cardiologist a message telling about the problem and that I contacted the manufacturer. NEITHER of them replied back. So I asked in a couple of groups on Facebook if they had the issue and that’s when they reminded me about the shutdown. Oh, how stupid I felt. Why couldn’t I have figured that out? I had read the back of the device when I emailed Biotronic, not even then did the 3G hit my mind. Sometimes my brain is so freaking slow. I need a pacemaker for my brain please! So I called Biotronik and told them that I had emailed them and not gotten any answer. She told me that due to that these are a little expensive they need to talk to a human being to be able to send a new one out, which is understandable. But there was not a problem for her to send me a new device, connected to the 4G network. And yesterday it came in the mail! Whoop whoop!

I am going back to the cardiologist in mid July on my annual check up and will find out then if it transmits correctly. Unless they find something suspicious of course… but I prefer not. But it feels good to have this little thing fixed, even though it doesn’t affect my pacemaker at all.