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Ged
09-06-2009, 10:17 AM
Hi! My name is Fabian and I'm 16.
In the past month I've been feeling ill. It first started with an unbearable heat in my chest, then chest pains and pains in the left arm (the pains in the left arm were caused by some sort of muscle strain). I went to the doctor, of course, and had an EKG done. It came out all right, except that I had 114 hb/m because I feared that I had a heart attack or some other serious disease.
The doctor gave me some medicine for the chest pains, and they seemed to work all right, at times. At others they were useless.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, something scary happened to me. I started trembling, my chest felt heavy, I felt I couldn't draw enough breath, I started sweating, and I had a certain nauseous feeling in my stomach... "Heart attack", I thought. But it went away quickly. My mother thought it was a panic attack, and I researched the symptoms on the net. Sure enough, I had a huge lot of them. The past week has been really hellish, with at least one attack per day, until 4 days ago I went to a psychiatrist hospital (aka a looney bin). I told them all my symptoms, the pains, the tingling in my fingers, the breathing... They gave me 3 types of pills: risperidone, bromazepam and fluvoxamine.

I'm not sure they're working properly, or perhaps they are but my fear is bigger and stronger.

My problem is: heart attack. Heart attack is what I see, what I smell, what I hear, what I eat, what I sleep. Heavy chest? Heart attack. Back pain? Heart attack. Pain to the right of my chest? Heart attack. Heart attack up and down and left and right and in the middle. I feel like the entire world should be shouting at me: "No, you idiot, there's no way you're having one at your age!". And always when I think "Yeah, I'm not having one, I should relax" that's when I get either a bit of pain in the chest or the arms, and then I think "I knew it was going to happen when I least expect it".

It's unbearable... School's starting in a week and I dread what might happen if I get attacks there too.

When I had an electroencephalogram done 2 days ago and the doctors told me to close my eyes and breathe deeply and don't speak, I had the mother of all panic attacks. It was like my whole body had become a pulse. I feared that I might discover that I have something wrong with my brain, though it, as the EKG, came out all right.

Any tips or help?

northstar
09-06-2009, 11:31 AM
hi fabian, it sounds like things have been tough for you lately :( i hope that you get better soon.

your fears about having a heart attack are very common with anxiety so you are not alone there. when someone has a panic attack there is a lot of adrenalin in their body and this can cause heart palpitations which people often mistake for a heart attack, it's very scary and i've had the problem myself in the past.

i think what you might find helpful is to speak to your mum about going to therapy. you might need some help to talk about your fears and help you to reprogramme your brain to not worry so much, it's hard work but it is possible. there is a particular kind of therapy called Cognitive Behaviour Therapy that especially benefits people with this kind of irrational worrying, many people here have mentioned they found it helpful. ask your mum to talk to your doctor about it.

you might also like to sit down with your mum and have a look at this post together: http://www.anxietyforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4087
in it i wrote out all the kinds of things that people find helpful with anxiety problems, and the things i did to get through my own difficulties. have a look through it and see what you can do to help yourself out as well as talking to your mum, doctor and taking your medication :)

you might want to start by taking a vitamin B complex to help you to relax after all this stress, be sure to check with your mum about this and ask in the pharmacy if it's ok to take with your medication!

i hope you feel better soon :)

snakeeyes148
09-07-2009, 07:44 AM
WOW...you are obsessed with heart attack mate.
I don't want to, but your condition is laughter provoking!!!

Don't search for remedies of your condition. Search for the real cases of heart attack and you will see that you have a lots of years to live...
Think about your schools in a positive way and it will be all right.