Issues of the Heart

I know I mentioned a couple weeks ago about having to go to the ER twice...here's what happened.

For as long as I can remember, I have always complained of my "heart hurting." My mom says I started saying this as soon as I could talk. I'll be fine, and then all of a sudden I get this tight, sharp chest pain right in my heart. It'll last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. In elementary school, I had a heart monitor to try and detect what the issue was. It looked like a little clip-on radio and had several wires connected by stickers onto my chest. I had it at 2 different times, but we were never able to capture it on the monitor. Through high school and college, it happened less and less, and now I only get this pain once a month or so.

However, on Sunday night, I got this same pain, associated with other symptoms I've never experienced with it. I suddenly felt very dizzy and lightheaded, my heart started racing, I had the tight chest pains, and my left forearm was throbbing while my fingers were tingly and numb. It started around 8pm, and I was hoping it would just go away. Around 11:00, I googled 'symptoms of a heart attack for women' and these were all on the list. I doubted that it was a heart attack, but we decided it was probably best if we got it checked out. Surprisingly, I was very calm the whole time. We got to the ER and they quickly hooked me up to (what seemed like) a thousand machines, with stickers all over my body. They did an EKG and everything seemed okay. Two hours later, we were on our way home.

I felt fine all day Monday and Tuesday morning. On Tuesday afternoon, I was at work, feeding the baby, when the same symptoms started again. My heart was racing, I became really short of breath, lightheaded, dizzy, HOT, and the same tingly/numb feeling in my left forearm. Luckily, the dad was on his way home so I called Doug and asked him to come get me. When the dad (that I nanny for) got home, he started asking me questions about how I was feeling, and I became scared when I couldn't really answer him because I was so short of breath. 

When Doug came to get me, I started to panic because I couldn't walk very well. In the car, I was going to look up directions to the hospital on my phone when I saw that my hands were completely stiff, and I couldn't move them at all. And they were kind of deformed, looking like a claw. That's when I really started to panic (and I think that's when Doug did, too). My breathing became shallower and faster, and the panic attack really set in. (I later found out that the claw-hands are a symptom of a panic attack)

When we got to the hospital, I couldn't walk so Doug scooped me up and ran me in there. I just remember that I was hyperventilating and they were all trying to get me to slow my breathing. They did another EKG and again, everything looked okay. I was sent home with instructions to see a cardiologist and to rest.

The next day, I saw a general practitioner who referred me to a cardiologist. We really have lucked out with doctors here, they have all been great. So after talking with the cardiologist, he thought the pain could be caused by a nerve issue or mitral valve prolapse, which basically means that one of your valves doesn't close completely, a little blood leaks and it could cause pain.

The next day, I had an electrocardiogram and treadmill stress test to see if we could figure out what was going on. The only issue was that these episodes didn't happen when I was being active...I was always at rest and relaxed when they came on. So it didn't happen during the test. He determined that I have mild mitral valve prolapse, and that may be the reason I've always had heart pains, but as for the episodes, we don't really know what caused it.

I haven't had another episode since then, but for about a week afterwards I had the heart pain way more frequently than usual. Now I am feeling fine, but he said if they continue to happen he'd like to put me on another heart monitor to see if they can catch it.

So I'm feeling hopeful that whatever those 'episodes' were, they won't be coming back any time soon. He said things like this can happen in clusters and they may never happen again, so let's hope for that!

I'll be back tomorrow with a much happier post!