First, a little history about myself and my family. I am a 21 year old male and a senior in college and have been a scholarship division one basketball player for all four years. I have no family history of heart disease (My grandmother has had several multiple bypass surgeries, but those are due to heavy smoking!) I drink on occasion much less these days as well as use chewing tobacco on occasion, never smoke though. I take Zoloft and Kolonapin for anxiety daily.
My freshman year of college was when I first noticed my chest pain. It started as a stabbing pain on the left side of my upper chest. It would come and go daily and last only a few seconds and then go away. This would happen at rest with no exertion. As I mentioned through this time frame I was playing basketball at the highest collegiate level. The pain didn't bother me much during conditioning or competition, but I would notice the pain creep up on me while I was running, but the majority of the time the pain would come at rest. I began to not only have these quick sharp stabbing pains, but also tightness and heaviness in my chest, which has almost always been on my left side. The pain sometimes originates in my back goes through to my chest and moves into my shoulder and down into my hand. As the pain started to bother me more I went to numerous cardiologists locally and had every test done in the book. EKG's, Blood Tests, Stress Tests, Echocardiograms, Stess-Echo, chest x-ray (everything normal).
Being an athlete and wanting to take every precaution I was referred to Duke University to be checked by some of the most renowned doctors in the field. They performed numerous tests again including a special test, where they could see everything in my heart in 3D (I don't remember what it was called). The doctor at Duke after the test told me he was going to use my test to show his medical students what a healthy heart looks like. He said it's not every day that a division one athlete comes in and we have the chance to look at his heart.
After this it put my mind to great ease and I tried not to think about the pain much. About a year passed and the pain began to bother me once again. The same pains either sharp stabbing pain in my left side of my chest or the heaviness. Both seem to radiate down the left side of my body through my shoulder and arms. I saw a cardiologist once again and had tests performed once again. I referred to a pulmonary doctor to have a lung function test done as well as rhuemtologist (sorry about the spelling). I had more blood word done and the lung function test was normal. The only thing that came back elevated was my ANA blood test, which they tested again and said it looked more normal the second time and not to be concerned.
This brings me to my current situation. About 5 months ago while on spring break I became extremely ill. I was riding in the car with my friends and all of the sudden felt like I was going to black out. I felt like I was sort of slurring my words, but no one noticed it. I kept feeling worse through the day couldn't eat or drink anything without feeling nauctious. My friend and I ended our trip as we both felt sick, although his was directly related to being lactose intolerant and he ate 5 cheese sticks the night before. The drive was 12 hours and miserable I felt like I was going to die the whole way! Once we got back I tried to sleep but couldn't and once everyone else woke up at home I went to urgent care. He told me that I had a stomach flu and I just needed to tough it out. It kept getting worse and I was sick for over a month with this. I went to the urgent care two more times and finally went to my GP. He told me he thought I may have picked up ecoli, because I was having extreme diarreah and couldn't eat for two weeks. I had a rash appear on my right hip that looked like little red dots. It took two months for that to go away and was worried that the ecoli could have caused a complication. I felt very uncomfortable and this is when my chest pain reappeared as well as numbness in my face and hands. I also was have extreme visual disturbances, light streaks and blurred vision, sensitivity to light. I had an mri done by a neurologist to rule out anything in my head MS or anything.
It took over a month before I started feeling any better at all in my stomach, and my doctor mentioned that he thought it may be anxiety (hence why I am taking the two prescriptions I mentioned at the beginning). Nervous that I may have a complication with the e-coli that caused my chest pain, I went back to see the cardiologist. I have had numerous tests done ekg's, stress echo, and blood tests, including a d-dimer and protein tests, along with kidney function tests, which came back totally fine. It has now been 5 months and the chest pain is a daily occurrence. As well as pain in my lower abdomen and daily headaches.
The chest pain is the same as it was before. Some times deep breathing recreates the sharp stabbing pain in my chest. Other times it is a heavier pain either in the middle to left side of my chest. I get sharp pains in my upper back and shoulders as well as down my left arm. I also have daily pain in my lower stomach. As I mentioned it comes at rest and I get light headed now when I walk up the stairs to my apartment (which could be due to me starting to get out of my athletic cardio shape ha) Over the past 5 months I have not been exercising or working out for my upcoming basketball season because I don't know what is causing this pain. It is truly affecting my life and I need to figure out what it is. I know that I have been tested thoroughly which helps put my mind at ease many times, but then the pain comes back and I don't know what to think about it. I want to be able to run and workout again because I don't want to be behind when I get back to school. It has caused me major anxiety and i feel like I have seen so many doctors.
Any thoughts on my situation or what may be causing my pains? Thanks in advance for the help! PS let me know if I left anything out that you might need to help.