scared:-(

[silke]

Hi;-) I am 27 and something very scary is going on with my heart. It has been going on for 4-5 years and now I really feel it getting worse. I've seen several doctors , and my EKG always came out normal, all they found was hypertension...but this is not the scarriest part. My heart beats sometimes real slow, sometimes real fast and the worse now and again just skips a beat which comes with a sharp pain aswell and cuts my breath:-( the worse is when I lay down, or when I am extremely tired and try to get some sleep. I work very early hours, and 3 times a week i need to wake up 2 at night to get to work for 4 in the morning. Many times I get only half an hour or only 15 minutes of sleep before work, and at afternoon when I finish and try to get some rest it gets really bad. I am very short of breath , my heart beats real slow and very strong beats, all my body kindof shakes with each beat, and these beats are not regular...its completely awful, I really fel that I could faint, I get very weak and dizzy and I cannot fall asleep because of it. Many times i cant sleep all night...I cannot live like this and so far every time I've seen a doctor they always say Im ok...they don't notice anything. Please , I'd appreciate any advice, or oppinion...:-(( thank you


This discussion is related to Abnormal EKG.

[stutterheart1]

This is quite likely normal premature beats or some sort of combo of things like I have. I am particularly symptomatic when I'm tired (I work on wall street so like you, I get 15 minutes of sleep a night for a few days straight sometimes). If the docs have done an ecg and stress echo, then they can rule out the high risk things like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, long qt and Wolf Parkinson White syndrom (syndrome). There's no reason to suspect that anything other than plain vanilla PVC's are happening. Still, you should see an electrophysiologist and talk to him/her about treatment options. If it affects quality of life, then it is not, by definition, totally benign.
Best of luck. Just know that I've been sure I was going to die of these things about 100 times and I'm still here. And now that I know a little more about my condition, I can handle onset without too much panic. For me, I need some benzo pills around for when I get really bad episodes. Perhaps you can talk to a psychiatrist to explore the pill option.