Waiting for referrals and severely deficient in hugs

[WorryRaptor]

Hey everyone.

I feel rather selfish posting here a second time, given that I've neglected to hand out any hugs of my own!

Have been having a rough time of it for the past month, and I'm just so worn out.
I don't have health anxiety, and I'm not even sure I really have anxiety in general any more, but this week I've definitely struggled with a sense of panic. I suppose it's kind of warranted.

Recently, I started getting long episodes of ectopic beats. I don't mean a flutter here and there, but chest kicking, breath stealing horribleness for hours and hours, with barely any peace in between. I have a little home use ECG, recommended by my GP as we had never been able to catch the occasional ectopics I would complain of, and they said to try and get at least one. I had given up on using it, as they had been so sporadic and would be gone by the time I got my fingers on the sensors. Now, with them coming on every few minutes, I finally caught them. I felt every single one, and finally had a visual of what was happening. I didn't panic, I just thought "oh, finally I have something to show my GP".

I stuck it out for a few days, until I started getting chest and arm pain. Off to A&E I went, having ticked off sufficient red flags to seek medical attention. And the heart gods being cruel jokesters, decided to make the ectopics behave for the 10 seconds they ran an ECG on me. They looked at my home ECG readouts and confirmed frequent ectopics, some in bigeminy, and took some bloods. Bloods were fine. No heart attack, electrolytes all good, and no heart murmur according to their stethoscope. So I was sent home and told to get a full cardio workup. Said ectopics are usually benign once there's no heart disease or structural issue with heart. Given my other symptoms, they said I should definitely have my heart looked at.

And that's the part that makes me worried. I've never heart my structure checked, and apparently I've been walking around with very worrying levels of cholesterol for maybe 10 years. I had no idea as my GP had said my overall number wasn't too high, but the A&E doc explained that the difference between good and bad cholesterol meant I should have been on statins years ago. Despite a healthy diet, the numbers stayed the same, but never got addressed.

So doc surgery called me to set up an appointment once they saw my updated records, only the earliest appointment is a month away. Am I walking around with heart disease? I hope not, but now the last year of agonising fatigue, chest pain, numb extremities, a sudden increase in palpitations and pre-syncope don't really paint a healthy picture. I've been dismissed for being too young/not fat enough/a non smoker/drinker etc.

I didn't post this in health anxiety, as I genuinely am not in an anxious state, I'm just so flipping tired and want to cry. Yes I have the normal levels of human concern given I have quite a few worrying factors for heart issues, but I haven't really sat and cooked up insane scenarios. I just want to feel healthy again, and with my heart literally flopping around like a fish all day, it's really difficult to feel like that's an option for me. I have to wait a long time to find out if these are harmless, or a sign of something worse.

I suppose I just want to feel like things will be ok. I'm not sure I have the mental capacity to keep pretending that everything's fine to friends and family.

If anybody has words of encouragement, or just a funny joke, or even a whinge of their own, please share

[NoraB]

You've got this, Raptor.

Have a hug from 'ol Nora.

[.Poppy.]

I don't think you're selfish in the slightest. I wish I had more insight, but I can pass out a virtual hug.

Heart issues are exhausting. My dad went through some - he went to the doctor with a virus and was told he was in AFIB, had a thorough workup with a cardiologist who said everything was fine, and then about a month ago ended up in the hospital because he was in AFIB again and was afraid it was a heart attack. According to their cardiologist: "the heart does weird things sometimes", which is both comforting and also...not. They put him on meds and he seems to be doing fine, though is regular cardiologist has said there would have been better meds for them to have used, but to switch he has to be hospitalized again so they're not doing that right now.

It can really just be a lot, and it's incredibly frustrating when you have these highly paid professionals that are, well, human but who are also maybe not doing their jobs as well as they could. I'm surprised your GP let your cholesterol "go", but I've also found that some doctors are more alarmed by certain labs than others. It could be the doctor in A&E would have put you on a statin, but that your numbers are such that other docs, including your GP, thought that diet/exercise would be enough to help? I had some issues with higher cholesterol myself and my doctor said because I was young and not overweight that I should just switch up my diet - it went years where it was still high and finally this year it's lowering, thankfully. But I do agree that if you're not 'high risk' they will often just let you go and hope for the best.

I'm sure this wasn't the most helpful post, but I'll be thinking of you and hopefully this month goes quickly and you can get some solid (good!) news after your appointment.

[Catkins]

[WorryRaptor]

Thank you everyone, I really appreciate the replies

@Poppy - I really hope everything works out for your Dad and they figure out the right course of treatment for him.

You're right, my GP probably looked at the overall number and since it wasn't drastically high, a simple diet change was the way forward, which is perfectly reasonable. The issue here in the UK is that we rarely get to see the same GP again, so lots of stuff isn't followed up on, or wires get crossed. When I raised the question last year regarding the considerably wide LDL/HDL gap in my bloods, and chest pain I was experiencing during exercise, it was a different GP I saw, and they called me a hypochondriac and told me sometimes we just feel pain and have to get on with life. Tried to make me do slow breathing exercises in the office while I was trying to describe my symptoms during a blinding migraine (which they know I have). I wasn't anxious, I was just in pain and trying to talk while she typed on the computer with her back to me. I apparently looked "too young and healthy looking to be having such problems". I was just too exhausted to keep questioning things or argue, and carried on with things as best as possible. I feel like I should have made more of a fuss.

I'm just trying to remain calm and wait my turn to be seen. The waiting is the hardest part. If I can at least know my heart is healthy enough to deal with these ectopics, then I can work out solutions.