Skydiving with a Pacemaker

One year ago I ended up in a serious medical situation and at the time I could not find much information on this subject online. I hope this forum post helps answer questions that may help someone that end up in the same situation.

I'm a 34 year old skydiver in Tennessee and I've been jumping a little more than 3 years. In the middle of October in 2019 I was finishing up a long string of work, mostly on the weekends, and I was looking forward to getting back to the DZ to have some fun the next few weekends before it got too cold to jump. That Sunday I started getting intense dizzy spells at work and I called a friend that is a general practitioner. Monday morning I went to his office, and after having an EKG he sent me to the ER located on the same campus. Within an hour I was on the cardiac floor of the ICU and I was diagnosed with Bradycardia or a dangerously low heart rate. By the end of the day I had a procedure to put in a temporary pacemaker. All of this was really scary and quite shocking. I'm still young, I exercise, and I eat healthy most of the time. After 3 days of scans and tests both cardiologists came to me and said that I have a healthy heart but its just not working properly anymore and I would need to have surgery for a permanent pacemaker. I was devastated.

As an avid runner my first thought was that I wouldn't be able to run anymore, my second thought was that skydiving was over for me. I asked the doctor if skydiving was out of the question once I healed. He said sure why not. Obviously this man was a loon, what kind of a doctor says it is ok to skydive. So later I got in contact with with my local S&TA. I told him what was going on, and to my surprise he said he was aware of several skydivers with pacemakers, and they have both been jumping for a couple decades. 

In February after healing for 4 months and getting the thumbs up from the doc I started jumping again. I have completed almost 150 jumps this year alone, and I feel great with no complications from the pacemaker. So... if you are reading this because you are in a similar situation, skydiving is not necessarily over for you. Listen to your doctor, take some time to heal, wouldn't be a bad idea to let staff at your DZ know about your medical situation. But you can do this, and you will be back in the sky in no time. 

-Take care, Blue Skies

Do you wear a Medic-Alert bracelet?

Pacemakers are more common than most people think and having bradycardia and getting a pacemaker installed is better than most forms of heart disease. Most people learn they have heart disease when they have a heart attack, but by then the damage is long done. In general, having a pacemaker shouldent affect your daily life much if at all. There are not really that many activities that I can think of that are unsafe with a pacemaker. I dont know why you couldent skydive or even BASE jump with one. The only concern I could think of would be the possible effect of a hard opening on the device.

On 10/25/2020 at 2:40 AM, Westerly said:

Pacemakers are more common than most people think and having bradycardia and getting a pacemaker installed is better than most forms of heart disease. Most people learn they have heart disease when they have a heart attack, but by then the damage is long done. In general, having a pacemaker shouldent affect your daily life much if at all. There are not really that many activities that I can think of that are unsafe with a pacemaker. I dont know why you couldent skydive or even BASE jump with one. The only concern I could think of would be the possible effect of a hard opening on the device.

I don't think hard openings are going to effect the pacemaker.
However, most pacemakers are fitted close to your left shoulder. And the wires from the pacemaker to the heart, are inside blodvessels. 
When you raise your left arm over your head, you are straining the wire, and can potentially dislodge the wire.
If dislodged, you might become bradycardic again, or even worse, get som kind of dangerous arytmia.

Raising your left arm to some degree over your head could be ok,,, but you should never hang from your arms, especially your left(if pacemaker fitted on left side).

Please consult your cardiolog, regarding such maneuvers.

Yours sincerly,
Bent Jøran Olsen
Skydiver and ICU nurse.