Crushing Chest pain and numbness on left arm.

[gusiella]

Hello my name is Guisella. Im 24 years old and consider my self to be a healthy person. I weigh about 126lbs and i try to be health conscience. I've been taking Adderall xr only 25mg for over a year now and has not caused me any problem that I have noticed. I do not take the adderall everyday. I smoke cigarettes which I know i shouldn't do and i hope to quit. I smoke now about half a pack a day. I have recently noticed that my heart rate tends to fluctuate very much and that sometimes I get some chest pain when Im commuting in Manhattan to work and running around. I am very sensitive to temperature changes and my hands and feet and nose get extremely red and swollen if I get a little hot. I haven't paid too much attention to it but I want to hopefully piece all of this together to find an answer to the episode i had yesterday. I woke up feeling ok. I do remember the night before  I got a sharp pain on the right side of my head but then it went away. I just felt my heat rate go up and then i had the pain in my head but i ignored it an went to bed. Well yesterday morning after i got to work, the only thing i noticed was a bit of shortness of breath while just sitting at my desk. As the day progressed I suddenly was overtaken by a crushing pain in my chest. I could literally feel my heart being squeezed by some kind of forces. Shortly after my left arm went numb and my heart rate was very high. I was sweating but my hands were cold and i was very dizzy and lightheaded. The shortness of breath was much worse and  I could barely catch my breath. My co-worker frightned, gave a aspiring which definitely helped within minutes. The pain and symptoms did not fully disappear but i could bare them after the aspirin. WHen the aspiring started to wear off the sympotoms came back just as bad. I walked to the train and walked home after and walking was making the pain worse and worse. I took another aspirin and went to the hospital. They kep me there for 6 hours of course. They took my blood pressure when i came in which wasw unuaslly high for me. I tend to have very low blood pressure lie 110/75or something. I had 130/80 or so. They gave me blood work and and EKG. I waited like 3 or more hours to hear back and by that time i was so hungry and dizzy , they took my blood pressure at that time and of course it had gone down probably along with my blood sugar. Finally the results came back and they told me evrything was normal. THey then submitted me for a Cat Scan to make sure i didn't have a pulmonary Embolism. After 3 more hours some other doctor came by and said "umm what did the other doctor say before to you?" i told him and he was like " oh ok well your cat scan is normal so you don't have anything." Now I'm just mad because I don't know what it wrong with me. I still have the chest pain and my heart rate is still high. I'm afraid as the day progresses it will get worse and i refuse to go back to the hospital. Is there a chance that these doctors can misdiagnose me on  something like a pulmonary embolism? Could they miss something like that? He told me " well we cant really say why u have this chest pain, but yeah just do some follow up with the shortness of breath.ok bye" SO now I am left kind of clueless of what to do next or if I should just ignore that pain and the rest of my symptoms. PLEASE help. I need some advice on what i should do. Thank you in advance for any comments.

[CNickels77]

This doctor will work out perfect then.  Her name is Donna Ingram and her info is as follows:

158 East 84th Street
NY, NY 10028
212-535-6340

I met with her once for a second opinion and she was very good.  I am going to use her as my cardiologist now (I had been using one back in CT where  my family is).

Let us know how everything goes.  How has today been for you?  When you call let them know there is a sense of urgency to being seen.  You don't want to have to wait long to get the tests done!

[gusiella]

Hi CNickels77. Yeah you are right, I definitely need to just go to a specialist because it seems like the doctors at the hospital could care less about what was going on with me and automatically discarded things because of my age etc.. if you could give me that info that would be rally great! i work in UES so i it would be perfect. thanks so much for your comment and for your help.

[CNickels77]

Hey there,

The first thing you should do is make an appointment with a cardiologist to get some test done to see what is going on.  I actually live in NYC and can give you the name of a cardiologist here on the UES.  She is pretty good and will probably order all of the basic tests to see what is going on.

Hang in there, you just have to get the ball rolling on the tests.