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Has anybody ever heard of this?

Posted , 3 users are following.

GYDA
GYDA

*If you have health anxiety it's probably a good idea to stop reading now, don't want to be putting bad thoughts into your head like i have mine*

Basically i'm 23 years old and for the past 3 years i've had very bad health anxiety. I've always had anxiety looking back at it, but its only the past few years where i've actually been getting physical symptoms.

I've had all the chest pain, i've had palpitations, the missed heart beats, shortness of breath etc. I've had every single test on my heart possible, 6 ECG's, 2 stress ecg's, a 72 hour ecg and finally an echocardiogram (Creating an imagine of your heart to check its fine structurally). But i'm still not satisfied, thats the beauty of health anxiety!

Googling my symptoms like I always do and I come across 'Mitrial Valve Prolapse' and one of the symptoms is anxiety, and the other listed are symptoms are chest pain, palpitaitons, shortness of breath, wierd pulse etc. Which is confusing because, the chest pains etc can/are symptoms of anxiety? So i'm here like omg i have anxiety, i have chest pains, i have palpitations.. i have mitral valve prolapse! But maybe I just have anxiety and the chest pains etc are the result of the anxiety rather than the prolapse? (I'm trying to convince myself this, having health anxiety i struggle, convinced i have the prolapse)

Now the diagnosis of the mitrial valve prolapse is an echocardiogram, which i have already had done and it came back absolutley fine. But then I read on one website that up to 40-50% of mitrial valve prolapses are missed on echo's. How they've got percentagei don't know, because surely its quite hard to have a figure how many were missed because if they was missed, how do they know they had one after? But anyway that stat has got me panicing that they might just have missed my prolapse on my echo, driving myself crazy over it! 

But the interesting part is there is apperently a thing called 'Mitrial valve prolapse syndrome' or Dysautonomia which is an imbalance in the autonomic nervous system which causes anxiety, chronic anxiety symptoms etc. I'm a bit sceptical about it as surely an imbalance in the autonomic nervous system causing anxiety would be known world wide surely and certainly would have come across some of my google searchs before. 

Basically my entire last 3 days has been taken up by complete and utter anxiety as to whether i've got this mitrial valve prolapse syndrome or 'Dysautonomia', i'm just in another world at the minute, in my own little shell. I get myself so worked up, the symptoms of the mitrial valve proplapse syndrome are exactly the same as anxiety near enough, argh worried sick! rolleyes 

I keep my anxiety to myself, don't like to talk about it to my girlfriend or parents, so heres the only place I can talk about stuff like this. I keep telling myself it's just anxiety, but then i'm like is the anxiety caused by this mitrial valve prolapse or the syndrome? Hate anxiety, can't even excercise now with out concentrating fully on my heart watiing for a bit of chest pain or palpitation. 

0 likes, 3 replies

3 Replies

  • lea1207
    lea1207 GYDA

    Posted

    All right GYDA,

    I think we need to consider two things

    1) the urge that you have to google the symptoms that you may experience at time

    2) mitral valve prolapse

    For #2 I can tell you one thing even though some literature say that 40 to 6o% or missed with echocardiography, you did an EKG and it was normal and a stress test also normal . With those 2 tests you can definitely put a cross on the mitral valve prolapse . Something would have been abnormal with one of the 2 tests mentioned. Your Dr should have ex plaines that bette to you. Plus some of the Candiac symptômes would have been permanent.

    For # 1 I believe that is where the problem is amplified, when you feel the urge to check the symptoms, try to think about something pleasant like your girlfriend or s baby smiling to distract yourself and refocus on the positive.

    You can do it.

    All of us here have of are going through this. I am glad you found us.

    We love you

    You can suppress anxiety

    • GYDA
      GYDA lea1207

      Posted

      Thanks for the reply lea, you're right and it's wierd because I know deep down in myself that your right but for some reason I can't fully convince myself but that's health anxiety I guess. At the start of my anxiety I had the cardiac symptoms then I learnt it was all anxiety, all the symptoms went away for maybe 6 mo the I can even remember thinking at one point 'haven't had chest pain in ages!' But then it come back and I'm finding this set of anxiety harder to shake off, anxiety about the heart is hard to just forget about.

      And I know I'm stupid for googling all the time! It drives me crazy, Ive diagnosed myself with so many different cancers and diseases from googling but I'm yet to be right with any of my self diagnoses! but once something pops into my head I just can't help Google it, this whole mitrial valve prolapse all came about when I was just laid in bed and suddenly thought I need to google chest pain again, got reading through loads of stuff and diagnosed myself again and myself in a mess! Then last week I was driving and suddenly thought about my grandma having a brain tumour about 8 years ago and I needed to google whether it's hereditary while I was driving! I go through good and bad phases with my anxiety but this is defiantly a bad patch.

    • Pablobrown
      Pablobrown GYDA

      Posted

      Ever since I registered with this site my inpox has been chocker with people starting new discussions about their health anxiety symptoms. We all know what anxiety can do to us,yet we convince ourselves that anxiety isn't the reason for our new symptoms,it's got to be something far more deadly. When I suffered from anxiety,I would google my symptoms,lets say a stiff neck (a neck injury is what set me off). I've just googled stiff neck,8 links down Meningitis appears. Now I would have read the symptoms of Meningitis,and convince myself I had the virus,even tho I only had one of the symptoms,but it didn't stop there with me. I would miraculously develop another symptom from the list of meningitis symptoms. Next time I googled, I would type in stiff neck and confussion,that would lead me to an even more frightening illness,and before I know it I'm in A&E, making a right cöck of myself convinced I've got Ebola with only hours left to live. I would go from a stiff neck to Ebola within a week.

      I'm sorry GYDA,but if you really want to get over anxiety,you need to get shut of your internet connection. I've been anxiety free (I still get slightly anxious every blue moon but who doesn't) going on 10 years now. From start to finish I reckon I suffered with anxiety for around 12 months (I was a right mess for about 6 months). After 8 months I'd had enough,I bit the bullet and gave my computer away,and gradually I  got better (I say 12 months, it could have been longer,my symptoms eased and became that slight that I no longer took any notice,and because I took no notice they disappear,so it's hard to pinpoint when I actually recovered). I've read of people who have suffered from health anxiety for 20 years, that could be you GYDA if you don't take some drastic steps. Good luck anyhow I hope you get better soon.

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