In an instant, your body betrays you. You feel you are floating, but you are dropping, powerless, to the ground. That’s how Mrs. Moy, in vehement Cantonese, described the most unsettling sensation of her life. Now, hooked up to cardiac, blood pressure, and oxygenation monitors, with an external pacemaker’s oversize pads gummed to her chest, she felt safe. But she refused to sit up, much less walk.
"No, no," she gestured. "Dizzy . . . so dizzy."
She had been sent from her cardiologist’s office, the first stop after a fainting episode at home. His note read, "67 y.o. with syncope and bradycardia. Diagnosis: Sick sinus syndrome. Admit for pacemaker insertion." Syncope means faint and bradycardia means slow heart rate. Sick sinus syndrome is a grab-all diagnosis that implies the heart’s own pacemaker, a nubbin of cells in the right atrium called the sinus node, can’t keep time because of ...
