An update.
I just had my first follow-up with the doctors at Cedars-Sinai after my surgery. Today it was with the Electrophysiologist, the doctor who implanted the pacemaker. Everything was OK, in fact it was better than OK.
It seems that the 'conductivity' of the cardiac nerve, which was blocked during the heart-valve replacement procedure, has returned to near normal and so the doctor adjusted my pacemaker so that it's now in basically a sort of 'standby' mode where my own 'pacer' is now doing all the work and the pacemaker is there as a backup in case the nerve starts to fail again. He said that this happens some times and that it's a good thing, but I'll still need to be seen every six months for a 'tune-up'. Of course, once I get the home monitor set-up (they'll be sending it me in a couple of weeks), this will be the primary means for monitoring my daily progress.
Anyway, I have to see the surgeon who did the heart-valve replacement procedure next Tuesday for my 30 (actually 29) day surgical follow-up, which means another 100 mile round-trip through L.A. traffic (it took us 2 1/2 hours to get up there today through the Monday-morning traffic and another rainstorm). I'll be glad when I'll only need to see my own cardiologist, whose office is 15 minutes from our house.
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