Trigger warning. Heart worries after college classmate "died from a heart attack"

[elle95]

One of my college classmates suddenly "died from a heart attack" last week. Although I wasn't close to her but I seen her and she seemed like a calm person and I watched her help others, it made me really sad of course like you see a person one day and bam! next day they're gone, it's pretty upsetting to me specially since I haven't had a lot of deaths in my family so I might be like a stranger in those situations, making very uncomfortable and scared when It comes to death. I'm not sure about her age since you see a lot of people at my uni that could pass around my age (I'm 22) and they're actually pushing 30, but I could say that this woman was between 26-34 yrs old so she was rather young. She had a 4 yr old son.

So one of my of my worries was heart failure because i spent like a whole year with my heart rate at 90 bpm and I thought that it damaged my heart and gave me heart failure. I had several electros and a echocardiogram and they came back fine. That was 3 years ago. But now I am scared I have developed some sort of dangerous heart problem and that my heart is damaged cause this year I've been getting more pvc like 15 in a row and all I read on the internwt is that more than 3 in a row are ventricular tach which can cause ventricular fibrillation (which is deadly in a matter of minutes). When I get pvcs I feel like I am going to pass out but I never have passed out thankfully, although I am still terried that i will drop dead in the bathroom or in the middle of class. I'm under lots of stress now since it is supposed to be my last semester at uni. Does anyone over here have the same problem?? Any advice.

I want to apologize as well cause I am egoistically using this girl's sad and unfortunate death. I've no idea of course what led her to have a heart attack. I'm not proud of this I actually despise doing this. But I can't seem to stop doing this, always using other's peoples unfortunate situations to validate my fears.

[AMomentofClarity]

You hit the nail on the head....you don’t know exactly what caused it. Maybe she had a genetic condition. Maybe it was a lifestyle thing. The possibilities are endless.

People die every day, young, old, unusual ways, etc etc. You can’t apply every situation you ever hear about to yourself or you will go absolutely crazy.

[Carlton]

A sad story to be sure. Reminds me of when my lifelong best friend died in 2013....sudden cardiac arrest. One day here, and then just gone. It really sent me into a tailspin at the time. Had a bit of a breakdown. But he was 41, and had been living with childhood diabetes for 25 years. As Clarity said, sadly, people die every day. While I of all people know how scary things like this can be, and how hard it can be not to dwell on death after such an event, you are young. You have your whole adult life in front of you, and so much to do and live for. I hope you are able to recognize this and while acknowledging the nature of this event, still be able to put it in perspective and move ahead. You have said yourself you already had many perfect tests. Please recognize just how rare an occurrence it is that someone in their early 20's suddenly dies of heart issues. I do understand having fears, and understand how hard they can be to deal with, but you have so much weighted in your favor.

[elle95]

You hit the nail on the head....you don’t know exactly what caused it. Maybe she had a genetic condition. Maybe it was a lifestyle thing. The possibilities are endless.

People die every day, young, old, unusual ways, etc etc. You can’t apply every situation you ever hear about to yourself or you will go absolutely crazy.

Thanks for replying x, that's the issue I always seem to take whatever happens to other people to myself like if someone in the news has a brain tumor, than I start validating that I have a brain tumor indeed bc I have chronic headaches or if x actor has lymphoma then I must have it as well cause I have had these lymph nodes all of these years so it must be it, I tell myself.

I still don't understand why do most of us with health anxiety do that, I guess I'll only find out when I go to therapy

---------- Post added at 04:33 ---------- Previous post was at 04:24 ----------

A sad story to be sure. Reminds me of when my lifelong best friend died in 2013....sudden cardiac arrest. One day here, and then just gone. It really sent me into a tailspin at the time. Had a bit of a breakdown. But he was 41, and had been living with childhood diabetes for 25 years. As Clarity said, sadly, people die every day. While I of all people know how scary things like this can be, and how hard it can be not to dwell on death after such an event, you are young. You have your whole adult life in front of you, and so much to do and live for. I hope you are able to recognize this and while acknowledging the nature of this event, still be able to put it in perspective and move ahead. You have said yourself you already had many perfect tests. Please recognize just how rare an occurrence it is that someone in their early 20's suddenly dies of heart issues. I do understand having fears, and understand how hard they can be to deal with, but you have so much weighted in your favor.

I'm so sorry to hear about your friend, dear x. Yes it's very sad, like she was almost finishing uni, a good student and that poor kide of hers *sigh*

I know it's rare that someone around my age suddenly dies but I still cannot get these thoughts out of my mind that it will happen to me. I think the fact that I have never experienced the death of a close relative -except for my baby nephew a couple of year ago- unsettles me a lot whenever I hear about death.

And also since I was a child I used to have very negative thoughts and I have always thought that I was gonna die first in my family or that I'll be the one who'll get cancer (I am the second youngest if 9 children and my siblings have all been healthy). I can't stop thinking about this poor girl at night, it's like I don't understand why did that happen to her

[MyNameIsTerry]

I'm really sorry to here about your classmate.

Something we are good at is kicking ourselves. Please don't despise yourself for feeling your anxiety because of someone else's traumatic event. If you witnessed a car crash but where not in it wouldn't it be shocking to most people? Wouldn't it be more strange if we didn't feel something? And just because your anxiety is affected by this doesn't mean you don't feel compassion for the poor person, and their loved ones, who is suffering from the trauma. From what you say it's clear you are thinking about them too or you wouldn't say you feel bad about it affecting your anxiety.

Please remember this. Anxiety thrives on negatives and kicking yourself unnecessarily, whilst very understandable, can lead to low moods from criticising yourself.

As for the trauma you've mentioned, like has been said this can happen to anyone and there may be issues involved you aren't aware of. It's going to be shocking to see someone young die from something more associated with an older age group. But think of it this way, it would still be as shocking if she had been hit by a car and died. That can happen to any of us too but we keep going. It would be traumatic, of course, and anxiety is likely to increase for a time until will get past the event, but is it so different how someone dies when they are so young?

[swajj]

We had some really bad storms here in Sydney last week. During the clean up a 39 year old emergency worker who was moving a fallen tree suffered cardiac arrest and died. My first thought was that there must have been an underlying issue. I hope he hadn’t been ignoring symptoms. And therein lies the dilemma for people with health anxiety. You don’t want to take the risk of ignoring symptoms but to overcome HA you need to.