What does your chest pain feel like?
Posted , 6 users are following.
Hi, new to the forum and new to having / currently diagnosing a heart condition... I've been asked by my (very angry) GP to track my symptoms in a note book for a month while we test out an emergency dose of Metoprolol. These are all the symptoms I've ignored and brushed off as something else (which is why my GP is quite mad at me since she feels I'm on the verge of a stroke and, putting it simply, may have damaged my heart.)
In doing this, I realized I've gotten used to constant pain, so I'm curious what your chest pains and symptoms feel like. I feel like I'm just hyper-fixated since I actually have to pay attention and the things I'm jotting down are just normal body aches and pains...
For me, there is about 1 to 4 times every three days or so where I get an episode that hits hard - a palpitation where I can't breath for 5-30 seconds and feel like I may pass out, or a radiating chest pain that hits my shoulder and up my neck which I have to hobble to the closest secluded area to lie down away from worrying eyes for 15 minutes to an hour - these I know are the bad ones. But then there is the every hour of every day, pulsing, aching, sharp stabbing, intermittent pain that doesn't knock me on my butt, it's just more annoying than anything and honestly I've gotten so used to it that I didn't even realize it was happening any more. The level of pain is on par with stubbing your toe or having heartburn, it’s uncomfortable sure, but not earth-shattering…
So what about everyone else with chest pain? Do you feel this way? Is it terrible? Or is it just heartburn, tweaked nerves, sore back, the usual aches and groans of getting older…?
I’m a 29 year old female by the way, if that helps.
0 likes, 5 replies
Scotgal mmblarg
Posted
Firstly, I wouldn't think your physician would get angry, but rather she should take action if she thinks you may have damaged your heart. Telling you to keep a journal of your symptoms and taking an emergency dose of metoprolol speaks volumes. In reality it doesn't sound like she's really all that concerned. I have had hypertension for over 30 years ( I'm 64), have severe tortuous carotid arteries, had a TIA some years back, but I have never had a doctor tell me to "keep a journal' for a month. Maybe they follow a different protocol in the UK. During a recent endoscopy while the anesthesiologist was preparing to give me a short acting anesthesia I noticed on the mobile machine that my BP was significantly elevated and mentioned to her that I hoped I wasn't going to suffer a stroked. She replied, "one high reading or even several for that matter does not induce a stroke, it takes years of high readings to cause a stroke." I'm sure she's correct, as my own father
suffered a stroke/heart attack at 62 (he succumbed) and he had had hypertension since he was 17. Your how old? 29? Unless you were dxed with hypertension from childhood I hardly think you've got anything to be overly concerned about. Your mental health could become an issue though if you start obsessing over the
possibility that you're going to have a stroke or heart attack. Good luck to you.
mmblarg Scotgal
Posted
I can completely understand haha. I always told myself "don't panic, it's probably just 'fill in the blank'" cause I factored in that I consistently have low blood pressure and am pretty young in this regard. So in my mind, I felt heart issues were the farthest from what were causing the aches and pains.
And it's probably just done differently with me, heh. My husband and I have a solid relationship with our GP - she's been seeing both of us for years (especially since my husband has an immune deficiency, so she sees us quite a bit more than your average patient.) This is why she was upset that I had been ignoring symptoms and shrugging them off with a joke. But she also knows that we are really tight on money so she works with us as much as possible before sending out for expensive testing or specialists. Plus, I honestly couldn't give her a straight answer one way or another on frequency of symptoms since I had ignored them for so long. So basically she knew we had to start somewhere (Metoprolol to try and manage the arrhythmia and pains) and the journal to figure out frequency of each symptom and if the starting dose has any affect on lessening them.
I just feel like a hypochondriac with listing everything... my mind wants to go back to "this is normal and nothing to take notice of."
Sway mmblarg
Posted
mmblarg Sway
Posted
Good question! No idea haha. Literally went in 2 weeks ago for a sinus infection and discovered this. Basically my heart beat is pretty irregular, had an EKG 10 years back which confirmed I have an arrhythmia, which seems pretty run-of-the-mill since I honestly don't remember having the test done or why I was in the hospital for it in the first place... When my GP took a listen to my heart, it was all over the place. I didn't feel a single palpitation that she was hearing every couple of seconds. The thing that she seemed most concerned about (aside from the more noticeable episodes where I can't breath) was that my heart doesn't seem to regulate itself: it would skyrocket from about 86bps to 198bps with the smallest movements from sitting up to standing up - again, didn't feel this in the slightest.
So we're still working on where to go from there
jacqueline01135 mmblarg
Posted
That's it in a nutshell . Write a book instead of notes.We humans do get lots of pains and tweaks, and either take a pill ,or rub something on it.