Should really think about putting this behind me

[jayware33]

After 11 years or so of dealing with anxiety, I think I'd call my self an expert .. A hypochondriac, a listener, a teacher and a nervous wreck! I've experienced almost every manifestation of anxiety and considered myself quite stable and capable of dealing with it. That was, until last week.

I made a post about chest pain behind the breast bone. At this time, the pain I told myself "was different" ... "A new type of pain" and "came on with exercise". After all my sensations and dealings with anxiety I genuinely felt that this was that real cardiac pain, I convinced myself that this time, it was not anxiety.

I had too many red flag factors, exercise triggered it, It was behind my chest, would happen at rest and I would get back, arm and shoulder pain too. I felt I was really having a cardiac type pain after all these years of worry.

I broke and decided to go to A&E over the weekend. I had a full 12 lead ECG and a blood test to look for elevated Troponin levels (a protein released with cardiac muscle damage). Guess what? All normal. Doctor out it down to muscle pain and anxiety.

I couldn't believe it, here I was, a seasoned vet of anxiety :) ... Had it all I thought and yet it still got me .... After all these years.

To cut a long story short, no matter how real the symptom may feel, chances are, there is a rational explanation for it and always never the worst case scenario we think it is.

I'm going to put in real effort to move on from my anxiety as it's ruining not only my life, but my relationship and work life. If something's going to happen in life, then it'll happen and there's no worrying that will ever change that, so, I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to try and get on with my life :)

Thanks for reading.

[Junot]

Did you go to the ER the day you felt those symptoms or did you wait several days for the weekend? It's important to perform the tests the very same day of the onset of the symptoms.

I have experienced similar symptoms to the ones you've had several times in different contexts. Particularly, one night I woke up all of a sudden feeling anxious and then a chest pain set in and I felt it was somewhat different... I went to the ER, they made me an ECG which was OK but in the blood tests two of the ischemia/myocardial infarction markers (myoglobin and CK) were slightly above their normal range (the one that is the most specific for myocardial infarction, troponin T, was normal though). I've had to wait 6 hours more to repeat the blood tests (because when there's an infarction they keep going up for hours) and finally at that point they were coming back to their normal values. So the doctors excluded any sort of cardiac event, but I still doubt it to this day.

This said, I've read recently an article (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2629063/) on which they say that panic disorder can trigger a microvascular angina (thus transient ischemia and pain behind the sternum). This can be induced even at rest, unlike the common angina pectoris one feels due to atherosclerosis.

So I really don't know if I should believe that the pain is only due to muscle contraction in the chest...

[jayware33]

A microvascular angina episode would elevate troponin. It would show up on the test.

I'm 26 and have no risk factors for angina (symptom of heart disease). I really don't think it's cardiac pain. Totally irrational.