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S.B
30-07-17, 11:59
Hey all,

I've generally been feeling a bit better recently since I last posted, but thought I'd drop an update with recent developments.

To recap, following my mothers death in December 2016, I have been suffering with (sometimes) severe cardiac anxiety, generally related to worries about angina and heart disease.

It was massively interfering with day-to-day life and I've had countless medical tests al of which have concluded that there is no cardiac source of symptoms. My most recent tests were in March/April time and overall, I've probably had about 6 ECGs, 2 ECHOs, 2 CXRs, 3x Blood Work, Cholesterol, Blood Pressure, the list goes on.

Anyway recently, I've been noticing chest feelings (I wouldn't call it pain and it's not really discomfort, more just a feeling of tightness I guess, but its certainly not severe when I'm walking round town sometimes. It seems to come and go and ***probably*** relates to me worrying about it.

I do a lot of running recently, and averaging about 25km a week and do a 10km every couple of weeks with a time of ~53mins so that's pretty quick and have never had to stop due to chest pain. I do sometimes get discomfort when I'm running but it generally comes and goes and does not get worse throughout the run which I would expect. I've never had to stop and often the discomfort goes throughout the run.

The "clear-thinking" me would probably put some of this down to general high exertion, but it's the "cloudy-thinking" me thats around at the moment. Other times when I go for a run, for example, yesterday I ran 6km on 32min and didn't feel any discomfort at all.

It's an absolute swine not being able to just relax and constantly think about this shit. I hate going up stairs because I almost always get out of breath at the top of several flights, which I know is normal but again, anxious me is beating the crap out me. I think I generally build up stairs more than I need to and back in the day I wouldn't have thought twice about walking up loads of stairs. In fact I have also build some stair training into my exercise regime, where I run up 4 flights of stairs and then walk down and repeat. Again, with this I don't experience chest pains or things like that.

I feel a bit better writing it down here, think I just needed a brain dump.

Hope you're all doing as well as you can. Love to all.

Keep on keeping on

S.B

S.B
30-07-17, 21:27
Anyone experienced anything similar?

Gary A
30-07-17, 21:38
Chest pain and discomfort can be brought on by faulty breathing patterns, and of course anxiety is a major contributor to that.

You've had every heart test under the sun and the fact you can run such distances would suggest that your heart is probably healthier than the average person.

floridagirl1984
30-07-17, 23:45
I agree with gary. I too suffer with this fear, it came after the sudden loss of my grandfather in 2012 and then My dad in 2014. I havent been the same since. I never focused so much on my heart or anywhere in the chest really and thats where my anxieties mostly are. I have had like you ekgs, labs, chest xrays, echo, hilter monitor and stress test and was given the all clear however i still at times think something is wrong or they missed something. But thats the anxiety talking, the stupid never ending what ifs. As intrusive as those thoughts are we do need to accept that its most likely anxiety talking.

S.B
31-07-17, 10:28
that reminds me, I've actually had a stress test and a 24hr monitor too, jesus, I've had the whole shebang.

Need to get over this.