What makes her tick

From trekking to taking dancing lessons, 30-year-old advertising professional Sabah Asnani, who has been on a pacemaker from the time she was a month old, has always followed her heart's desires    Thirty-year-old Sabah Asnani is like any other working woman. She runs a advertising agency, plays badminton every day and also crams in a daily dance class. But there is one thing that sets her apart from her peers — the palmsized machine that keeps her heart beating. 

    Sabah, who lives in Santa Cruz and owns an agency in Pune, is probably the first Indian to have got a pacemaker at an unusually early age — she was only 33 days old when it was implanted in her body in 1981 to keep her heart going. She was born with intra uterine myocarditis — a condition in which there is no cardiac rhythm in the upper or lower chamber of the heart. In the past 30 years, Sabah has had four surgeries to implant new pacemakers. The fourth one — an advanced dual chamber machine - was implanted in 2006. She is scheduled for the next surgery in another three years. 
    "It was no less than a miracle to implant a pacemaker in a tiny baby. In those days, they were not as compact and advanced as they are now," says Dr Dev Pahlajani, chief interventional cardiologist from Breach Candy hospital who is currently treating Sabah. Cardiac surgeon Dr K N Dastur, along with Dr Pahlajani, had performed the first surgery on Sabah at the Nanavati hospital. "The entire electrical system of her heart was destroyed due to the myocarditis which she developed while in her mother's womb," Pahlajani says. "The surgery is not easy but I never feel the presence of a machine inside me," says Sabah. 
IT'S NORMAL 
When she was a child, her parents never stopped her from participating in sports or taking up any activity. An avid swimmer, Sabah recently came to Dr Pahlajani to take a health certificate so that she would join Bollywood aerobics. "I have succeeded in continuing to do everything normally," says Sabah, who loves to travel. One of the happiest moments in her life was when she trekked for four hours to reach a monastery in Bhutan last year. "My cousin who was travelling with me gave up. I knew I would make it to the top and I did. When I reached the monastery and told the people I had a pacemaker, they were shocked," she says, adding she has travelled alone to many destinations such as USA, UK, Greece, Switzerland, Canada and the Gulf. Trekking has always been a part of her itinerary. 
…AND CHALLENGING 
But when she has to enter high security areas such as airports, Sabah carries an identity card she flashes. "Luckily, the pacemakers are extremely small and the advanced ones are immune to metal detectors or other electro-magnetic waves," she adds. "I haven't been stopped at malls. But at airports, I flash the card before they can stop me. I don't allow the airport security to use hand metal detectors as a precautionary measure," she says. She also has to use the card if a metal detector beeps when she passes through one. 
CARE 
Sabah cannot afford to ignore even very basic health problems. "I have to see a cardiologist immediately even if there is slight giddiness or breathlessness," she says. She also gets her pacemaker checked routinely to ensure it is functioning smoothly. "She cannot miss check-ups as her heart is completely dependent on the pacemaker and has no rhythm of its own. Any disturbance in its functioning of the pacemaker and 
    she may drop dead," says Pahlajani, adding, "It may sound harsh, but patients follow up on check ups only when theyunderstand the severity of the issue". "I stick to this order from my doctor," says Sabah, whose attitude to life is inspiring. WHAT IS A PACEMAKER? 
It is a small medical device implanted in the chest to regulate the heart's rhythm or to control abnormal heart rhythms. When the heart's natural pacemaker is not fast enough or an ailment interferes with its rhythm, the pacemaker maintains an adequate heart rate