Panic Attack Ended me up in hospital with Heart symptoms

[KconleyK]

Hello Everyone,

New to the site, just looking for a support, suggestions, and to see others experiences.

Very long story short, I have a 5 1/2 year old daughter, who I have primary custody of. She visits her mom at her Grandparents house every other weekend, her mom cannot drive her and her grandparents have to supervise the entire visit. Her mom doesn't help support her financially at all, so I am a true single dad struggling with money and all the issues my daughters mom causes.

I've written a ton of side effects off to stress or anxiety but the other day it got out of hand so I went to Right Time (an emergency doctors office, not a primary doctor but not an ER either). I had a weird feeling in my chest (left side of chest on side not front of chest), weird feeling in left arm and down to left wrist. It was a pain that hurt, it was just a dull numbness type feeling. More annoying then anything. However when I got to Right Time they made me do an EKG and said they saw something weird and sent me to hospital. 45 minutes later the hospital did an EKG and it was fine, they saw no issues, they also did blood work and xrays, and could find nothing wrong.

Below are the symptoms I have.

1) Dull pain on the left side of my chest, on the side not the front of my body, weird dull senstation in my left forearm and wrist, and same dull feeling in the bottom part of my left jaw.
2) Can't concentrate - I don't feel light headed but I feel hazy a lot of the time, I can be having a one on one conversation with someone and my mind is a million miles away and I don't feel there in the moment if that makes sense. I will respond to the people and what I say to them makes sense, but after the conversation I feel hazy about what we even talked about.
Shorter Temper - I don't ever yell or anything but I'll snap at Taylor, if I am working from home and she asks me a question while I am writing an email I'll snap at her very quickly for no reason, and I've never done that before.
3) I feel nervous or restless a lot
4) I seem to have had zero energy over the last two months
5) I sleep horribly
6) Once I start thinking about my symptoms, I can't focus on anything else, every little twinge or feeling in my body I over analyze and over focus on
7) My ears constantly feel like I am on an airplane
8) Something called deperonlaziation - which as I read makes you feel like you are watching yourself, which is so hard to describe when I've tried to tell people what I mean
9) Constant pulsing headache on sides of my head above my ears
10) Feeling of Doom - this comes and goes frequently but I focus on something bad happening. Never thoughts of hurting myself or others but constant What IFs with things with Taylor or if what would happen to her if something happens to me etc.

I've been scared it was a cardiac/heart issue but now I am thinking it's stress/anxiety. I am currently on wellbutrin but a therapist thinks I should try lexapro instead.

Has anyone else experienced this? or the symptoms I have that mimic heart issues?

Then I turn to google and think I am dying. Just looking for support or advice from someone else who may experience this. I am finding it hard to concentrate and feel hazy.

[Benjammin69]

Hi mate sorry to hear your having a tough time. I'm no doctor but your symptoms sound like depression and anxiety) have you ever considered whether you are depressed as well as suffer anxiety? They are horrible illness but they intertwine with each other so normal one would give the other one a louder voice than if you was to struggle with just one of them. I have had all of your symptoms and have struggled too mate it's a horrible journey but nothing in life is permanent.
Go back to docs and tell them get on some meds that should be alleviating some of those symptoms so you can figure out where it's all come from ( a therapist can help with that)


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[KconleyK]

Hi mate sorry to hear your having a tough time. I'm no doctor but your symptoms sound like depression and anxiety) have you ever considered whether you are depressed as well as suffer anxiety? They are horrible illness but they intertwine with each other so normal one would give the other one a louder voice than if you was to struggle with just one of them. I have had all of your symptoms and have struggled too mate it's a horrible journey but nothing in life is permanent.
Go back to docs and tell them get on some meds that should be alleviating some of those symptoms so you can figure out where it's all come from ( a therapist can help with that)


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thanks for the reply. I know I have anxiety as I can feel nervous and anixous at times, but I never feel depressed or down. Maybe depression is hitting me some other way than mentally? It's just me and my five year old daughter at home, and we have a blast, I enjoy my life minus the financial aspect of trying to raise her alone and the stress her mom brings on me but besides that I feel pretty happy in life, can depression show itself even if you feel happy?

[Benjammin69]

thanks for the reply. I know I have anxiety as I can feel nervous and anixous at times, but I never feel depressed or down. Maybe depression is hitting me some other way than mentally? It's just me and my five year old daughter at home, and we have a blast, I enjoy my life minus the financial aspect of trying to raise her alone and the stress her mom brings on me but besides that I feel pretty happy in life, can depression show itself even if you feel happy?



Hi depression can come out in different ways, there are different degrees of depression I have been to the lowest of the low with clinical depression where I couldn't move, get out of bed and if I did the only thing I wanted to do was die. But the last few days I have a blip and I was still able to go to work but I felt edgy, nervous, anxious and no energy at all but I'm coming out of that blip nowZ personally it sounds like a bit more than a anxiety and the illnesses are so insidious that you can sometimes not even realise what's going on


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[KconleyK]

Hi depression can come out in different ways, there are different degrees of depression I have been to the lowest of the low with clinical depression where I couldn't move, get out of bed and if I did the only thing I wanted to do was die. But the last few days I have a blip and I was still able to go to work but I felt edgy, nervous, anxious and no energy at all but I'm coming out of that blip nowZ personally it sounds like a bit more than a anxiety and the illnesses are so insidious that you can sometimes not even realise what's going on


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How do you treat it besides medicine and talking to a therapist?

[Benjammin69]

How do you treat it besides medicine and talking to a therapist?



To be honest I don't know... you can try ride it out but unless you make some positive steps forward and breakthrough the anxiety/depression you can't? The most common way would say they treated it was to accept it and the it diminishes...
There is something called the ****** ****** I used 4 years ago it treated it then but I let things get on top and tried to ride the storm for years until I just failed miserable on august 19th 2016. That day will stick with me for ever [emoji25]


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[MadWomanintheAttik]

Whatever you do, never google your symptoms. I've done this in the past when I first started getting anxiety (when I was 19, I'm now 33) and every time it made the panic attack much worse. I feel like learning about panic attacks and how they can make your body mimic symptoms of other things might be worth reading about when you aren't having a panic attack, although having this knowledge doesn't make any of my panic attacks seem less scary.

I know the single parent feeling, as I am a single mother to two 4 year old twins. Like you, I don't feel like they cause my anxiety since I started having the anxiety back when I was only 19 years old. My household can get a bit crazy though which sometimes leads me to believe that they induce some form of anxiety in me, lol!

In the past 6 months, I have gone to the actual emergency room for heart attack symptoms, and each time, they have basically told me that I'm not having a heart attack and it's just anxiety. I too fear having a heart attack or stroke. Those are my two main worries as far as health is concerned. You'd think the fact that the EKG and chest scans being normal would help me to not have any panic attacks, but nope, they still come, and usually when I least expect it and am trying to relax.

I'm also on medication, but it seems to have stopped working recently, or so I think? I went from having 1 panic attack a month to 1 every other day or so. I'm not sure if one can actually get rid of them permanently - my mother and brother have them, although they seem to respond better to them and they function normally. I suppose I just don't respond well to stress or maybe I'm more sensitive?

Anyways, I wish you the best of luck, and sometimes it helps knowing that other people suffer from the same thing and that you aren't alone. You aren't crazy either.