The other morning I woke up and I was having slight chest pains and shortness of breath. I figured it would go away and waited most of the day until it got worst and at 2pm called an ambulance to come check me out. My blood pressure was really high but the heart monitor said my heart looked alright so I went to the ER just in case. I had all sorts of tests on my heart and they all came back clean. But they found out I do have an irregular heart beat (arrythmia) but it's nothing to worry about. My doc said a lot of people have it but most don't feel it and never know they have it, the fact that I can feel it when mine beats weird threw me into a full blown panic attack, which cause my heart rate to elevate and make my blood pressure go through the roof.
I've also had an infected cyst on the back of my shoulder for the past 3 weeks and didn't have it looked at...because again I thought it would just go away...it didn't. (I'm really stubborn that way). The darn thing turned into an abscess that was huge and terribly painful and he talked me into letting him take that out too.
But they let me come home after keeping me in the hospital over night and keeping me up all night running tests. They gave me one short of morphine for the chest pain and wouldn't you know it...it made me sick. Then when they did the CT scan with iodine contrast the iodine contrast made me sick and they had to keep giving me anti nausea meds all night. Fun night.
But at least I know the irregular heartbeat I keep feeling isn't anything to worry about, and that darned abscess is now gone..even though he left a big hole in the back of my shoulder to heal closed on its own..yuck.
I scared my family half to death because I hardly ever get really sick and haven't been in the hosipital in forever.
Oh and hospital beds suck...my butt hurts from sitting in it. lol
They took blood so many times over the course of that day, that night and all the next morning. I also had 3 EKG's, A Chest X-Ray, an Echo of my heart and a CT Scan of my lungs to make sure there were no blood clots. They did a full work up and checked for any possible heart attack signs or symptoms they could think of.
It seems that I have some sort of irregular heart beat that isn't going to hurt me and other people have the same thing and enever know it because they can't feel it thumping in their chest. I can feel it thumping in my chest like my heart is stopping and I could see it on the heart monitor I was hooked up to. All the doctors said that I had a panic attack when I started feeling the thumping from the irregular heart beat and then started getting muscle spasms in my chest, which led me to have an even bigger panic attack where I had shortness of breath, dizziness and numbness in my arms and then my blood pressure spiked way up when the ambulance got here because of everything. But now that I know what I'm feeling it doesn't worry me, I just have to learn to live with the thumping in my chest.
I've also gone on a diet and started walking a little more. I really don't want to end up in the hospital ever again. That's absolutely no fun what so ever.
I think my doc was more concerned about the abscess on my shoulder than anything else.
I was an idiot and let it go for 3 weeks and it got really bad. By the time a doc looked at it, it was about 3 inches round and almost 2 inches high sticking up off my skin. The doc really gave me a lecture about letting something like that go. But I thought it would just go away at some point...in the future sometime. Eh, live and learn.