What could be causing this?

[philip341]

Hi, I am 16 years old and have had quite a few symptoms for a while now. I get frequent chest tightness, shortness of breath and palpitations. It ussually comes on with only a little bit of activity such as walking for only a few minutes, and l'll have to sit down and catch my breath. In the past few days i've also been getting pain between my shoulderblades and my left shoulder. I've been to the ER a few times and they did an ecg and chest x-ray which were normal. I asked the doctor if he could order a few more tests and i had a stress test and echo done. The echo showed mild triscupsid regurgitation and mild mitral regurgitation, but the doctor doesn't seem too worried about this. The stress test I was only able to run for 3 minutes before i got really short of breath, but the ecg was normal the whole time. Tommorow I have a pulmanary function test and i'm seeing a pulmonologist in 2 weeks. The doctors don't seem to know what is happening so far. It 's really worrying me since I can't walk for more the a few minutes without having to sit down and catch my breath. I get tired very quicky. Before I used to be able to do a lot more then I can now, I can't go out anywhere anymore since i'm so tired. I also forgot to mention that i cough almost all the time, but it's a dry cough. Does anyone know what this could be? Does this sound like a heart or lung problem? And is mitral and triscupsid regurgitation normal?

[Carol in PA]

Philip,
Look at the symptoms here for Babesia:

http://www.anapsid.org/Lyme/symptoms/tbi-symptoms.html

Babesia is a protozoan spread by ticks, blood transfusion, and in utero.
Despite there being 13 known forms to date, current testing only looks for two of them.

Air hunger
Cough
Fatigue
Fevers
Headache
Hemolysis
Imbalance without true vertigo
Mild encephalopathy
Shaking chills
Sweats

Also, low magnesium can cause palpitations.
Carol

[Dr. Kokil Mathur]

Hi
Welcome to the MedHelp forum!
A mild mitral or tricuspid regurgitation is found in many and usually does not require treatment. However since you have persistent dry cough, it could be due to the tricuspid regurgitation and this may need to be further evaluated by a cardiologist. The cough and breathlessness could also be due to asthma or allergic bronchitis. Since you are seeing a pulmonologist soon, discuss this with him, along with the possibility of Tricuspid regurgitation as the cause.
Another possibility is that you have gastric reflux and acidity, which is causing cough and shortness of breath. Severe anemia is another possibility.
Hope this helps. Please let me know if there is any thing else and do keep me posted. Take care!