CHEST PAIN

[egg641]

I recently went to the emergency room due to some chest pain that I had, my left arm and right leg went numb and the numbness crawled up to my jaw shortly after. The fingers on my left arm were turning purple and it almost seemed as if I had bruises on my left arm. The doctor at the ER gave me an EKG as well as an x-ray of my heart and did some blood tests and everything came back fine, the only thing he found was an incomplete right bundle branch and told me that it was nothing major and I shouldn't really worry about it. He also told me that he would like me to have a stress test done as soon as possible and to consult my primary care physician and then sent me home.

I went in to have the stress test done about a week later and everything looked fine until it came time for me to stop. I ran for about 10 minutes on a treadmill and the nurse was constantly checking my blood pressure and recording it, right before getting off the treadmill my blood pressure was about 130/70, once the test was done she had me sit on a chair and proceeded to take my blood pressure again and it came back as 92/45 then about one minute later she took it again and it had risen back up to 102/60. She told me this was odd being that I am a 26 year old female 125 lbs with no previous history of heart problems, but she told me to check up with my doctor and speak to him about it.

Since my visit to the ER I have been waking up every morning with chest pain, it seems as if someone is putting a lot pressure on my chest, and I have noticed that I get "electrical shock" headaches on occasion that only last a few seconds.

Unfortunately I do no have a primary care physician that I can consult with at the time due to not having health insurance and being that I recently moved to a new city.

Are all of these things that are happening to me related and how should I take my stress test results? Also, should I be seeing a neurologist instead of a cardiologist?

[Jerry_NJ]

Do you have the documented results of your stress test and the visit to ER?   If not it may be good to try to get these and then go to something like a lower cost clinic, someplace where you can consult with a doctor from minimum cost.

Passing the stress test is a good sign, but there are many other expensive heart tests that can be run to get a better look at your heart.  I understand you caution not being backed with medical insurance.  Still, given the strange (to my mind) comment by the nurse about your BP (the numbers don't strike me as a problem) it would be worth a few $$ to get a doctor to look at the tests results already done.  I suppose it would be better to see a cardiologist, but they do cost more than a primary care doctor in my considerable patient experience.

Given your age, and assumed no other heart risk factors than the one that took you to ER, I'd guess you are all right, still you symptoms that took you to ER were very serious.  One inexpensive measure you can take if you stomach isn't troubled is to start taking a aspirin a day with one of your meals.  I take my aspirin with breakfast.