Doorbells and alarm clocks spelled deadly danger to Allan Todd for 40 years until doctors in Newcastle, northeast England, finally fitted a pacemaker to ensure his heart no longer stopped at unexpected noise, reports said Wednesday.
Todd, a retired hotelier, told how any unexpected noise in the morning – even the arrival of the window cleaner – would send him into a faint for half a minute. It sometimes took hours before he recovered his powers of speech and movement.
The fainting spells became longer with the passage of time, and Todd’s wife Mary, who ran a guesthouse in Scarborough with him, was frightened of waking him.
A doctor on the Spanish island of Tenerife advised him to seek a ”tilt test” for his blood circulation after treating him for one of his dead faints while on holiday. Traffic outside his hotel had woken him up and promptly caused him to pass out.
Todd (63) was referred to Newcastle, as the waiting list in Scarborough was six months. An emergency pacemaker that starts working when his heart stops has now been fitted.
”I wouldn’t be here today without them,” Todd said.
”They found out my nerve-wiring was the wrong way round. Most people sit up in bed if they wake with a start. With me, the ticker stopped, I dropped on to the floor and that was me out of it altogether.”
The bizarre condition started when Todd was 23. Doctors tried treating him for epilepsy, but that produced no result. They said it was ”a miracle” that Todd was still alive. The doctors still do not understand the condition fully, but the pacemaker has proved an effective treatment. They assured the couple’s three children the condition was not
hereditary. And the Todds are now able to use an alarm clock to ensure they get up on time in the morning. – Sapa-DPA