HELP! Is this panic/anxiety maybe? Warning Long

[flmom09]

In August I spent two days in the hospital. I don't think at the time they realized I was having a panic attack from anxiety. That's what I tell myself now in order to keep myself calm. For months afterwards I made the cardiologist very rich off me lol. I had a nuclear stress test done to rule out anything wrong with my heart which came back normal. I would appreciate it if someone could tell me if what I went through sounds, or was a panic/anxiety attack.

A little on my family history: Both grand fathers died of heart attacks, one was only in his 30's. My father had a heart attack, stroke, a triple by-pass, bladder cancer, anxiety/panic from fear of heart problems, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, congestive heart failure, neuropathy, and liver problems which he passed away from in Feb. My grandmother had two heart attacks one after the other. She had a mild heart attack and when the nurses ran into her room it scared her so bad she had a massive heart attack. She lived! She also has diabetes. My other grandmother died of liver cancer, diabetes, and congestive heart failure, BUT she got the CHF from chemo and radiation therapy to try and kill the cancer. She also had gall bladder stones which resulted in removal. So it wasn't a genetic heart problem. My mother had a operation to take out some of her intestines because she had diverticulitis. She's had gall bladder stones which resulted in removal, and endometriosis which resulted in a hysterectomy. She has acid reflux. Please note: Before August 2008, I did not sit and think about all the things I might get from inheriting them. Now I do after my hospital visit.  

Here is my timeline/outline/symptoms of what happened.

October 2007 - Job as a patent assistant to a law firm. A high stress job simply because it was virtual and I am the type of person that once I start on a project I want to get it done now, not take my sweet time. There was a co-worker that was teaching me the foreign side of the patent filing and I was annoyed with how slow she was with support. I felt her attitude was that she really didn't care and I could wait all day for whatever I needed. I wake up not feeling so very well. I remember I felt like what I call toxic. It's hard to explain, but it wasn't like sick coming down with something. It was like someone injected something toxic running through  my veins. And my eyes and head felt yucky too. So I wasn't in the best mood already. Then to start my day I was getting irritated with the co-worker.

Note: The day before I had been researching online the symptoms of a heart attack because my blood pressure was high.

So has I try to calm myself from the irritation, all of a sudden I felt a little dizzy/lightheaded and like I was going to pass out. To me that feeling of passing out was it felt like I couldn't get any air through my nose. It was strange. So I jump up out of my seat thinking something was wrong with me. I call 911 and tell them to please hurry because I think I'm going to pass out!! While I'm on the phone with them all of a sudden my heart starts pounding really fast. Ok that had never happened to me before so I really start to "panic" and run out of the house to meet 911 at THEIR door! When the guys got out of the truck they looked at me and said..this is for you? I felt like a frog or something weird they'd never seen before. I said, "yeah" and pretty much pushed them out of the way and climbed up into the truck! They took my BP and heart rate and EKG said the HR was already back to normal, but my BP was high and I needed to get it checked out. I was not having a heart attack and that I probably had a panic or anxiety attack which mimic heart attacks, that I was fine. They said I probably got a big rush of adrenaline and I would probably feel really sick. I get out of the truck, go back into my house, call my mom and proceed to cry about it because I think they just didn't want to deal with me and there is something wrong with me. She finally talked me out of it and I went on about my life.

Feb 2008 my dad passed away. I became really depressed. My high BP is still untreated because I don't have health insurance. Even though this was the most traumatic experience of my life, I did not have any type of attack, and you would think if I had panic/anxiety disorder this would be the time for it to make itself known.

August 2008. Days leading up to my second attack I had a lot going on. My job was stressing me out, I quit and then went back after my dad died. I wasn't happy with the company because I was an IC, but they were treating me like an employee. I was looking for work trying to find something before I quit again so that my husband wouldn't carry the full financial burden. I started to get even more depressed as I soon figured out that I wasn't going to find any other law firms willing to work with me virtually and there aren't any IP law firms in my town. Going into other field wasn't an option because I wouldn't be paid what I was used to being paid with the law firm. So I was stressed out about that. Then the day before my attack my sister asked me to go with her to pick up her boys from their fathers house because he was refusing to give them back to her. She let them go to his house in another state for his visitation etc. So we get there and I start getting anxious because it was really stressful the whole situation. We had to call the cops, and to make matters worse they wouldn't get evolved even though my sister had court ordered papers that she has primary custody. I felt so bad for her! So we had to leave and start back home. On the way home we stopped at a store with a pharmacy and I checked my BP. It said 188/95. I was like wow, but it didn't bother me.

The next evening I had a slice of pizza, coke, and a king size chocolate bar. Yeah, not very good for me. Maybe an hour later I was reading some manuals on odesk and all of a sudden I got that dizzy/lightheaded/passing out feeling again. So I jumped up and go sit down on the couch next to my husband and try to calm down. Then I feel my heart do that pounding thing in my chest. The pounding thing lasts for a few seconds. I just starts pounding so hard so I feel it. A few seconds later I don't feel it anymore, but it's still pounding because of what my vitals say. So I go check my blood pressure. I don't remember the exact reading but it was so high that it freaked me out and I tell my husband to take me to the closest pharmacy so I can check my BP because mine is probably broke. I get out the door and not even to the car and the heart starts pounding again! And the passing out feeling starts up again. Then I start to have a hard time breathing. I think I'm having a heart attack!! My husband calls 911 and the whole time I was shaking and going through the other symptoms thinking I was having a heart attack! It was so bad I start asking the lord to forgive every sin I have ever committed because I thought this was my last night on earth.

Continued below...

[flmom09]

Before the hospital stay I ate bad and never exercised. I would say a month later i pushed myself to get out of bed and do something. I started by doing small things around the house. Just washing dishes for a few minutes wore me out. That was not normal for me. Eventually I worked myself up to walking 10 minutes a day. Now I am at 2 miles a day, but I still have constant fatigue. I don't monitor my heart rate while i'm walking because i'm afraid that if it's beating fast (even if it's normal) I will go in to a panic attack. I do not have any symptoms when I walk.

When Dr did the nuclear stress test i told him I could walk on the treadmill, but he still wanted to do nuclear. During the testing I heard him talking into his recorder that I was flushed, shortness of breath (but he said it was because of the med), and heart rate high.  When he gave me my results he said they were normal, but it's not 100%. So i'm like darn what if I have a heart problem and no one will ever figure it out.

[erijon]

Wow, you've been through quite a bit. Bottom line, it does sound like anxiety to me, but I'm not a doctor. I used to have a heart anxiety as well after a scare and a night in the hospital, turned out to be a bad gallbladder, had it removed and issues went away. I can remember the days of feeling every heartbeat and every PVC's and the increase in heart rate and flushed feeling they would bring on due to the release of adrenaline.

Do you exercise much and if so do you get any symptoms when you do? Most symptoms of a heart attack are associated with exertion. Sounds like you did not take an exercise stress test, more like a drug induced stress test. I try to exercise 45 - 60 mins per day at 75% of my max heart rate. If nothing else, I get some peace of  mind that my heart is till working right!

Wish I had some better answers for you, perhaps someone else will. Hope you get to feeling better.

Good Luck,

Jon

[flmom09]

Part Two...

911 shows up, get's me in the truck and starts working on me. My heart rate was 180 beats per minute. They give me this med in my IV to try and get my heart beat back to normal. It didn't work so they start heading to the hospital. Oh yeah I'm really freaking out now. They give me the med a few more times and it does get me down a little bit, but not much. I ask the paramedic if it was panic/anxiety and he said NO that if it was the med would have put my heart beat back to normal.

I get to the hospital and they run blood tests, EKG's, Ultra sounds of chest, and X-ray of Chest.

ER DR came up with a lot of different things that might be wrong with me.

1. "It looks like you might be in CARDIAC ARREST"
2. "I think you might need to have a catheter done to see if anything is wrong with your heart"
3. "I think you might need to have your sinus drained" I say "oh you know I have had some nose problems recently". He says "not that type of sinus, he thinks my heart rhythm is off track"
4. " I want to double check and make sure you don't have a blood clot. That might be why you have an irregular heart beat"
5. "lets do another EKG because this doesn't look to good"
6. After my blood tests come back he says everything is normal except my white blood count is a little higher than normal.

And this went on for  hours while my heart was pounding away. I had no chest pains or anything, just the hard time breathing and every now and then it felt like hot flashes from my head to my back.

Finally he admits me because I think he ran out of ideas on why my heart was pounding so fast and they couldn't get it to come down.

So the internalist visits me the next day and asks me about how I'm feeling and what happened etc. Didn't ask me anything about health other than the heart beating etc. She said it was still a little high and my BP was a little high and that the cardiologist would be in sometime that day.

So the Cardio shows up at 1:00 A . M. ! You heard correctly. 1:00 A. M. So I'm startled out of bed and he asks me what my HB was when I came into the ER. I tell him and he says " oh that's normal". HUH?! Did I just hear him correctly because I thought he said that was normal? Maybe if I was exercising or running or something, but no that's not normal for someone resting, right? He then tells me he thinks I have 'ACID REFLUX". Huh?? Where did that come from? Hello! I'm in here for my heart and it was pounding really fast and my blood pressure is high? What is going on here! Sheesh! He said my potassium was borderline whatever that meant. I did try to research that on Google a few months later, but it would depend on what he meant by borderline.

Anyway, by this time he puts me on a BETA BLOCKER. Ok.....if you think I have acid reflux, why are you putting me on a beta blocker? If you don't think there is anything wrong with my heart, then why are you putting me on a beta blocker. I was really looking forward to a visit with MY cardiologist. I go home the next day and try to put everything behind me. Well, that didn't happen. Two days later I was back at the ER because I kept getting these feelings of what I call hot flashes that travel from the back of my head to the front of my chest. It was freaking me out. The ER checks my blood and runs the same tests. EKG, chest x-ray and the Dr said everything normal except you could tell on my EKG that my blood pressure had been high a while and that anytime the bottom number is 95 or higher to come back so they can get it down. They said YOU ARE PROBABLY HAVING ANXIETY and gave me a shot of Ativan and a prescription of Ativan. I didn't care what was going on then. That stuff was WONDERFUL!

Ok, so a day or so later I start getting "chest pains" which then throws me into these attacks with the hot flashes and the shakes and every time I have one of these my BP goes up. So I finally see my cardio dr and I start having one of those attacks while I'm in the office. My BP was really high. He asked me for my family history and then turned to me and said he didn't think I had heart disease because I was to young. He thinks I have anxiety and takes the ativan from me and puts me on Klonopin instead. I didn't like that to much because klonopin takes a million years to kick in and when you're having an attack, you need faster action. He also put me on Zoloft for depression and felt that the depression was throwing me into these attacks.

So, months go by and I visit him regularly and he still says anxiety/panic and keep taking the Zoloft. He took me off the Klonopin. He also weaned me off the beta blocker. I kept having the chest pains though and he finally said ok let's do a nuclear stress test. By the way that test is no joke! When they put that nuclear med in my IV it felt like a building was on top of my chest for FIVE minutes! That was the longest five minutes of my life. I wanted to crawl out of my body it was so bad.

So anyway the test came back normal and he said the chest pains are from anxiety/panic and upped my Zoloft to 100 mg. In the meantime I keep telling my family he's lost his mind and that I'm probably going to die of a heart attack and no one thinks there is anything wrong with me!

I had another pounding heart/panic attack two weeks ago and was able to get myself back to normal a few minutes later. That one didn't last for hours like the one in Aug did thank goodness.  I just don't know what to think. During those few months after getting out of the hospital I lost my job because I was having the attacks all the time and couldn't get out of bed. I was exhausted and it seemed every little thing I thought about was a ticker for me to go into an attack. I carried the phone everywhere I went even to the restroom because I thought that if I passed out or started to have a heart attack I could call 911 in a hurry and they maybe could save my life if they got here quick enough. It was the worst few months of my life! I was afraid to do anything! I was afraid to die. I thought I was going to die. Even now I think something is wrong with me besides the heart. I think I might have cancer, ulcers, liver cancer, gall bladder problems, you  name it I think I have it! I HATE living like this.

Twice in one month I had really bad stomach pains. So bad that they would travel to my back and I would throw up. They lasted for a few hours at a time. I would get some relief for a few hours then it would start up again for a few hours. This happened twice in one month. So I don't know what to think.

Does all of this sound like I have anxiety/panic?

Now that I've written a book about my symptoms..I hope you all aren't to annoyed you read this far. I thank you if you did
read this far :)