heart twinges

[shotokansho]

I have this every single day, for most of the day. I have been having it for a long time. I have had 3 ECG's and a 24 hour monitor and it came back normal apart from a few skipped beats. I also saw a heart specialist and he told me he couldn't see anything worrying and that the skipped beats were normal and nothing to worry about.
Having said that it doesn't take the worry away from me, I think it is something I will always worry about and when I have a bad bout of them I really crap myself. It's hard to see reason so I understand how everyone else feels.

[alistair]

It was a great relief for me to find this thread. I started suffering with panic attacks a few years ago. Since then I've been free from attacks (CBT books and talking to a friend suffering from the same problems helped me) but I have suffered on and off from the symptoms mentioned in this thread - occasional twinges and sharp pains around the left-hand side of my chest (front and back), feeling like my heart has skipped (usually makes me want to cough) or has beat with a real thud - particularly when I'm an anxious or stressed. Anyway, recently I've been feeling anxious, stressed and panicky again and I've had a couple of attacks and the pains in my chest/heart are activated easily.

When out and about recently I suffered from the feeling that my heart had skipped or thudded, followed by increased heart rate which then made me really worried (becomes a bit of a self-sustaining loop) which brought me very close to passing out - an ambulance was eventually required but by that time (over an hour later) I was feeling somewhat better and my heart rate was pretty normal when they did their tests.

I've had an ECG in the past after visiting my GP about my first panic attack and it came back completely normal (although I wasn't feeling anxious or stressed at the time of the check!). A few months ago I went back to the GP again but I was pretty much fobbed off by being told "you wouldn't be worried about it wasn't near the area of your heart would you?". Anyway, I'm going back yet again to the GP next week and I'm hoping to get somewhere with it this time - from what I've read it looks like I really need to tackle my general anxiety/stress levels to try and solve the problem.

[xvolatileheart]

Alistair, those describe my symptoms exactly! At first it was the thumps and racing heart that really scared me, but now it's the chest twinges. They feel really sharp, but tend to dissipate quickly. Of course by that point, I'm already in a panic that my heart has stopped working.