Hi everyone,
I am a 25 year old female and I have had some problems with my heart for the last 6 months or so. I can often feel my heart beating, have chest discomfort/tightness which can last for days at a time, and occasionally have episodes which last for an hour or two where I feel dizzy and faint and can feel my heart thumping. Occasionally this is also accompanied by a racing heartbeat, 160-180bpm. I feel very tired all the time and find it hard to concentrate. I often get dizzy when I stand up or move too quickly.
The symptoms seem to be worse at night or while I am relaxing, they don't seem to be stress-related.
I have had a lot of ECGs and a holter monitor but they haven't managed to pick up a bad episode while it is actually happening. The holter picked up some isolated supra-ventricular ectopics. My ECGs show that I have a slightly prolonged QT interval, apparently it is "just at the very upper limit of normal", the doctors seem distracted by this, I'm not sure whether it's the actual issue.
I am booked in for an exercise test and echocardiogram but need to wait a month or so before the tests.
Anyway, I can cope with the symptoms I have described above, but I have had three isolated episodes which really scared me -
1) I felt a very hard, sharp squeezing sensation (like a hand squeezing around my heart) and immediately felt so dizzy I almost blacked out. This was followed by hours of a thumping, irregular heartbeat
2) I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. When I tried to breathe in, nothing happened. It wasn't like there was a block, or like I was wheezing or struggling to get any air in, I literally just couldn't suck in any air. This lasted for about five attempted breaths, again I almost fainted, until suddenly I was able to breathe again. Followed by an irregular and very fast heartbeat for an hour or two.
3) Again, woke up unable to breathe. This time I could breathe in a very small amount and after a couple of gasps I got breathing back to normal.
When I say I almost fainted, I mean my head was spinning for 10-15 seconds, I could feel myself spiralling out of consciousness, and things were starting to go black.
My questions are -
1) Is there any explanation for waking up unable to breathe like this? Both times my breathing has come back to normal but I am terrified of not waking up, or waking up and not being able to breathe at all and blacking out.
2) I have completely cut out coffee, alcohol and sugar, am taking multivitamins and trying to get plenty of sleep and do some light exercise every day. Is there anything else I can do that might help?
I have been to my GP about ten times, once to the emergency room, and to two different cardiac specialists. They are all unable to tell me what is wrong with me. The anxiety of not knowing what it is makes the symptoms worse when they happen. I just hope that the next round of tests will give some more certainty.