Jessika Seward, then 22, felt a jolt of pain in her chest while working an overnight shift as a cardiac nurse in April 2023. At first, she brushed it off. But the pangs continued for a half hour and a co-worker urged her to seek help.
After numerous tests, Seward learned that she needed an intervention for a slow heartbeat. “I just started sobbing. They’re like, ‘No, no, you’re OK,’” Seward, now 23, of Dayton, Ohio, tells TODAY.
com. “I had a gut feeling that meant I was probably going to need a pacemaker.” Seward had known for some time that there was something different about her heart.
As a college soccer player, she underwent a physical and an EKG to make sure she was healthy enough. During her EKG doctors discovered she had a first-degree heart block. A heart block occurs when something prevents the heart’s electrical system, also known as the conduction system, from working correctly, says Dr.
Robert Kowal, a cardiac electrophysiologist and general manager of cardiac pacing therapies at Medtronic. People can have a first-, second- or third- degree heart block. The first is the least severe while the third is the most severe.
Doctors never uncovered why Seward had one at such a young age. “The general consensus is that it’s probably a genetic thing I was born with, and they just happened to find it,” Seward says. “People can go their whole life with a first-degree heart block and never have any symptoms.
” But Seward developed signs of heart blo.