Not a typical case

[Danide]

I am a 27 year old female, 5'9, 165 lbs.  Eat healthy low fat whole grains, etc. My grandfather on my mom's side has had strokes, but he's 85, my other grandfather died at 75 of lung cancer, but he smoked ate bad and worked at chemical plants all his life.  My mom, sister, and aunt on my dad's side all have what they have come to believe is panic attacks, though I'm not sure how thoroughly each has been tested, but otherwise all family live fairly healthy long lives. I exercise regularly, quit drinking (which I used to do pretty heavily and regularly on the weekends and a couple of glasses of wine a night on weeknights) smoking (which i used to do only occassionally) and caffeine intake three months ago after showing up a the ER for a heart beat of 160 that I woke up to that continued for 30 min. to an hour. I did take Yaz and yasmin for about ten years and quit taking it a few months ago( right before my heart started going wacky) For a few months before that I had been having breathing problems that felt like my throat muscles were constricting and my stomach muscles would clinch, I'd usually have this on the hour drive home from work, if the symptoms lasted for a while, I would feel slightly dizzy. I started to have problems sleeping on and off during that time.  On one particularly bad day, i left work early and ended up stopping my car in the middle of a dirt road and opening my door while I caught my bearings because i thought if no one saw me surely I would pass out and die (heart raced cold sweat limbs shaking almost parylyzed, by the time I got to where the small town paremedics could find me, I could walk but was still feeling very bad on and off...they looked at me like I was a crazy person, took my vitals and said all indications were that I was very healthy.  (Of course I am the typical story up until recently everyone has thought I was very bad at handling panic attacks) when i went to the after hours clinic after that, he said it was most likely panic attack and also gave me a prescription for my heart burn)  About six months later is when the night of the ER visit occured...all I really had at first was a racing pulse..later I started to feel light headed, on the way to the ER in the car, my legs tingled, and bythe time I got up to walk in, I was feeling relatively better, again vitals normal, three hours later the doctor sees me, normal EKG, says probably dehydration, diagnoses palpitations and says to quit caffeine..etc. A month later, I have another bad night and go to a family practitioner who says my vitals are good, resting heart rate mid 50s, BP a little higher (130 something) but they say its normal, decide not to put me on beta blockers or test me because of my vitals.  Flash, to two days ago, get brief sharp pain on right side of chest towards middle, happens a couple of times while I am sitting at the computer my hands feel a bit swollen, I decide I'm tired of living through this crap and that I'm going to try to take my butt down to the charity hospital..on the way there my heart pounds like crazy, I get there, its fine, I feel weak though.  They test my vitals, all fine, thyroid and sugar tests are fine...then they tell me that my troponin levels are elevated, not to the point that they think I had a heart attack, but they want to keep me for observation. They do a chest x-ray and see nothing, they keep a moniter on my heart and though I have some of my normal tensions and discomfort going to sleep, the say my moniter stayed normal, even when I had a couple of sharp pains on the right side of my chest again.  The second troponin test came in  and my nurse told me that it was a little lower. My resting heart rate seems to be sometimes low mid 50s and sometimes fluctuates up to mid 70s when they do my vitals, and my BP fluctuates between 105 to 120 top number and 65 to 75 bottom number. That morning I had an echo and I was asking the tech questions, she said it looks like its pumping fine, she just wasnt sure how hard it was squeezing?  She said that my heart would switch from one normal beat to another slightly higher.  When I returned to the room, the intern assigned to me said they would get me a king of hearts moniter and he would see me at his lab in a week.  He said if i went to his lab then later i could get in to see the cardiologist, though the night before i had been promised that I would see the cardio in the morning..they answered none of my question, the nurse wouldnt tell me what my last troponin test was, the intern gave me no instructions or meds and said he would hold off on the Beta-blockers for now (I had been concerned about taking them with my low heart rate)  Does anyone have any idea what is going on with me?

[Danide]

Thanks for responding to my post. It is reassuring to hear that others panic manifests into physical problems. Yeah, I'm pretty sure a lot of this has to do with anxiety but a lot of my problems have been happening when I am not stressed.  They come hard and severe and the last week my chest pains have been spot on in the center of my chest and left side radiating to left arm once too.  I went to the ER and was hospitalized again for elevated troponin, my first doctors agreed that this was serious, but then the cardiologist intern the next day said some people just have chronically elevated troponin levels, others were calling it a troponin leak.. apparently my troponon levels can just chill at levels of .25, .18, .22 and its okay, because they dont see any problems on their charts, it felt like they were coming to this diagnosis because they had no idea what to do with a person with all the signs of a heart attack, but the vitals of a healthy person.  This time they did record my sudden change in heart rate/ bp that changed from my normal resting 54, had been sitting in the bed the whole time to a fluctuation between 80s to the 130s..when it came on, i was just sitting up in the bed texting my sister, not one of my stress moments at all, and with this episode came an intensely icy, numb, and tight feeling in my chest and uncontrollable shakes,  they did an ekg about 15 minutes later and said that they saw increase in heart rate but no irregularities other than sinus arrythmia.  They did a ct scan and found only a nodule in my adrenal gland, but said it looked to have normal blood flow,( although all this is a bit more exasperating because I am at a teaching hospital and this is the first time many of these people have seen CT scan results on regular population in the first place).  two weeks until i get those results. Again the next night I had severe pain in the left side of the chest radiating to my left shoulder with my palps I told the nurse who called icu and they said their outdated little box moniter they had hooked on me that goes to ICU had seen nothing out of the ordinary.  But what I find most confusing after the tests that they were willing to do, is that they refuse to do an angiogram on me and they have done no stress tests.  They keep looking at me and saying "you're just too young" or "some things just can't be explained medically."  But I really would love to know how the most important organ in my body can be slowly leaking its contents and no one feels the slightest bit of urgency.  They have me on aspirin regiment and adavin right now, but this still isnt completely solving the "physical manifestations" and I go back in two weeks to find out anout the adrenal nodule..etc.

[kay2486]

you sound like me, i have anxiety/panics, they're awful arent they, my doc was unsure to put me on beta blocker because when im not anxious my bp is low but not too low i was put on them because my heart rate was 150 my bp was 140/90 everyday i lived in panic, i was fine but i started worrying bout the side effects such as low heart rate, beta blockers stop the palps but you will still feel anxious, they dont help highly anxious people like us mentally,they only stop the physical things n its the way we think that causes theses sensations. if you stop worrying bout things your health they will go but it takes time its taken me 7 months to get normal again.