About 4 mos. ago I was diagnosed with PVCS by my primary care doctor. She said they were common and not to worry about them. To be safe she did and EKG and I wore a holter monitor for 24 hrs. No events; everything was good. Over the past four days I have experienced PVCS while at work along with chest tightness and shortness of breath, tingling down my right leg and was light headed. I am a teacher and several times I felt like I was going to fall over and pass out, but took a moment to refocus and moved on with the same events occurring over 4 days. Today I called a nurse advisor at the local hospital and of course she said I should come in. I know it's a liability thing more than anything and my point to her was that I know that doctors and medical staff are extremely busy and so am I and I just don't want to waste anyone's time nor my own. I told her I would call my primary doc and talk to her instead. I left a message with my primary doctor's nurse and went on with my day. I am a traveling teacher, so I drove to my next school, taught and as I was headed up the stairs and out the door, I experienced significant tightening and rapid, irregular heart rate. I decided to stop and ask the health assistant to take my blood pressure since I hadn't heard back from my doctor. My pressure was 146 and I skipped several beats. I know that 146 is not a high heart rate, but my blood pressure is typically between 100-118/68-72, so this was unusual for me. I didn't realize that she would not allow me to leave and insisted that my spouse pick me up and take me to the clinic. I almost completely skipped the clinic because my doctor was not in and I just knew they would scoot me over to ER. I was right. When I was initially checked at the hospital, my blood pressure was only 104 and I was ready to walk out, but was talked into staying. Strangely enough, the ER doctor that attended to me was the parent of one of my students. I usually refuse to see doctors who are parents of current students, but he happens to be someone I feel that I can trust; he's genuine and I feel the my information is safe with him and that he truly had my best interest in mind. He advised a cardiac CT and I agreed. Prior to the test they had to give me 3 vials of a medication to slow my heart rate, once I was in the lab, they began to do the prior set up and brought me a nitro glycerin, next thing I new a doctor was there do administer yet another dose of some drug to bring my heart rate down. It didn't work quite as well as they had hoped and I did have one pvc in the middle of the test which gave 1 image that was not clear. When I met with the ER doc, he said that the CT showed 0% calcium and he was confident that what I was experiencing were these PVCS and that if it continued next week I should call my primary doctor and that if I had severe chest pain, fever, sweating, vomiting that I should come back in.
Question 1: If I have 0% calcium in my arteries there is nothing blocking anything to cause a heart attack correct? PVCS are harmless and I should learn to ignore them...correct?
Question 2: After I left the hospital and arrived home I broke out in a sweat, washed up with a cool wash cloth and put on summer pjs. My heart continues with the abnormal and fast beating and I just don't feel right. I still feel light headed and now it's 2 a.m. and I can't sleep. I'm am just wired and also have an overwhelming feeling of wanting to cry, but I am good at keeping my emotions in check. I never have a problem falling asleep anywhere anytime. I usually need 9 hours of sleep to feel good the next day. Is this something new that comes with age that I just have to learn to ignore? Should I try to exercise my way through this?
Question 3: I also suffer from frequent migraines and as a preventative take propranonal and venaflaxine. I've been taking these meds for several years. Could these meds be causing some of this?
Question 4: I do have a seizure disorder which has been well controlled with meds. No seizure for almost 20yrs. now. I don't think this is related in any way to what I'm experiencing.
Question 5: I live in close proximity to the Mayo Clinic, should I consider a second opinion or would this be a waste of time and resources?
Question 6: These symptoms would not be related to stroke would they? Heart attacks don't scare me as much as Strokes. Since most women die from the first heart attack, I figure that would be far better than suffering a stroke. But, I don't think either of these is related to PVCS or are they?
Question 7: I take a long list of meds daily and I'm at the point of wanting to stop everything but my seizure med. and Maxalt, Ketorlac and Flexerall which help my migraines. Would it be helpful to dump the wellbutrin, propranalol, venaflaxine, prevacid, zyrtec, levothyroxine, singulair and just get my system free from all these different chemicals?
I'm feeling pretty alone and I don't want to go to doctors if this is nothing, yet I don't want to be stupid or ignorant about this either.