Is it safe to stop worrying????

  First I would like to thank you for offering this site...I have searched the internet for answers to many of my questions and came across this site.  I am a 37 year old female, non smoker, not over weight     not a diabetic and no other health problems except for the one I am inquiring about. I also have no family history of heart problems in young adults except for 2 distant cousins ..both males in their 30's who had heart attacks.  My problem started a year and a half ago with upper l sided chest pain.  I went to my family Doctor immediately and he told me he figured it was not heart related since I was so young and ordered a barium swallow and upper Gi series. The barium swallow was negative and the upper gi showed a very small amount of thickening..so I was put on prilosec for a year...I was not having any stomach problems and the chest discomfort continued on and off. One morning I woke to having tingling in my left hand and fingers and when I stood up I was having a very strange heaviness in my chest which I will describe as my left breast weighing 10 pounds...I felt like I was going to pass out...I have since had a couple of those episodes. I again went back to my family doctor and he still said it had nothing to do with my heart but would order an ekg basically  because I wanted one.  My EKG was abnormal...it showed inverted t-waves and the report was as follows....NSR, rate 78, diffuse st-t abnormalities.   My family Dr. insisted that that was probably my normal EKG but he consulted a cardiologist (because I was very upset) I went through the following test....Echo, Thallium stress, King of Hearts monitor...all were normal but my EKG continued to stay the same.  I continue to get upper l sided chest pain at just about any time with or without exercise and I also have tingling in my l hand at times as well as occasion mid sternal chest pain that seems to go right through to my back.  My Doctor is not concerned at all with my heart and I just need to know if I should be???  I have 2 young children so naturally I want to take care of myself so that I am there for them as they grow up.  Do you feel as tho I should be concerned with any life threatening heart problem???  Do I need to push for any further testing??? And also could esphagitis or gastric ulcer disease cause this heaviness     in the l upper chest area and also the tingling I get in my l arm and hand??? Is it possible that my ekg is normal for me...I was told women sometimes have these sort of changes on their cardiagram??? Thanks so much for taking your time to answer my questions...I don't have a single day go by that I am not worrying about my heart health.  Brenda            

[CCF CARDIO MD APS]

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Dear Brenda,
Yes, it is very possible that these non-specific changes on your ecg are simply a normal variant, especially after a normal echo, stress test, and king of hearts monitor.  Of course medicine is not 100%accurate, so I can not say that you have nothing to worry about, however given the negative tests and the atypical nature of your chest pain syndrome you have almost nothing to worry about as the likelihood of a life threatening cardiac event occuring in an individual such as you (with all those negative tests) is very very low(as low as it gets).  And YES, absolutely the chest pains you experience could be GI related (gastritis, ulcer, reflux, etc.)
So Brenda, the things you do need to worry about are getting in daily aerobic exercise and eating right (as well you should have your cholesterol checked given that family history.)
I hope this information is useful. Information provided in the heart forum is for
general purposes only.  Only your physician can provided specific diagnoses and therapies.
Feel free to write back with further questions. Good luck!
If you would like to make an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic Heart Center, please
call 1-800-CCF-CARE or inquire online by using the Heart Center website at
www.ccf.org/heartcenter. The Heart Center website contains a directory of the
cardiology staff that can be used to select the physician best suited to address your
cardiac problem.