Lotte
20-02-09, 00:27
Hiya,
I| lived in the Netherlands since 2002. I'd asked my doc there about treatment some 6 years ago for panic attacks(due to post trauma) and he'd not been at all helpful. I landed up alone there as my husband worked long hours, very isolated in a foreign country and due to my agoraphobia I couldn't go out so rarely saw anyone except my husband.
Over time my panic attacks seemed to become endless. I dreaded every minute of every day and as soon as one panic attack ended another seemed to begin.
Last April I went to get out of bed one morning and had a muscle spasm in my chest, laid there thinking it would pass but it didn't. I eventually managed to get out of bed but this spasm kept happening and I could actually feel and visibly see the muscles tensing up. Over the following week whenever I tried to hoover or do anything my arms went very weak and I felt very faint, so spent much of that week laying on my sofa.
By the following Friday a week later I couldn't even sit up due to the spasms and dizziness. I ended up calling the doc who came to my house. The neighbours had had to smash the back window to let the doc in.
Anyway, this was the weird part. The doc took my heart BPM when he sat ne up and it was 46 bpm. He then asked me to stand and walk towards my kitchen holding his arm. Within about 3 steps the BPM went up to 220! He immediately called an ambulance.
I spent the weekend in the cardiology unit and then had various tests done on my heart and they could find nothing wrong, although they did say that there was something wrong on my arrival at the hospital but were apparently too late and had missed? whatever it was. I was given a letter that said if my symptoms returned I could go immediately by ambulance to hospital. (In NL you have to get your GP to send you).
We are told that panic is just in our minds and cannot affect our health, yet after this incident the hospital sent their psychiatric team to see me and they prescribed diazepam which really calmed my system down. Until that happened I was still very physically ill.
I've been doing alot of thinking and surely if a person feels that amount of panic over a very long period of time or many years their heart rate would rise, yet would there come a point where the heart itself becomes exhausted/worn out?
I wondered if there is any medical evidence of this? or if anyone else has suffered similar.
Thanks :)
I| lived in the Netherlands since 2002. I'd asked my doc there about treatment some 6 years ago for panic attacks(due to post trauma) and he'd not been at all helpful. I landed up alone there as my husband worked long hours, very isolated in a foreign country and due to my agoraphobia I couldn't go out so rarely saw anyone except my husband.
Over time my panic attacks seemed to become endless. I dreaded every minute of every day and as soon as one panic attack ended another seemed to begin.
Last April I went to get out of bed one morning and had a muscle spasm in my chest, laid there thinking it would pass but it didn't. I eventually managed to get out of bed but this spasm kept happening and I could actually feel and visibly see the muscles tensing up. Over the following week whenever I tried to hoover or do anything my arms went very weak and I felt very faint, so spent much of that week laying on my sofa.
By the following Friday a week later I couldn't even sit up due to the spasms and dizziness. I ended up calling the doc who came to my house. The neighbours had had to smash the back window to let the doc in.
Anyway, this was the weird part. The doc took my heart BPM when he sat ne up and it was 46 bpm. He then asked me to stand and walk towards my kitchen holding his arm. Within about 3 steps the BPM went up to 220! He immediately called an ambulance.
I spent the weekend in the cardiology unit and then had various tests done on my heart and they could find nothing wrong, although they did say that there was something wrong on my arrival at the hospital but were apparently too late and had missed? whatever it was. I was given a letter that said if my symptoms returned I could go immediately by ambulance to hospital. (In NL you have to get your GP to send you).
We are told that panic is just in our minds and cannot affect our health, yet after this incident the hospital sent their psychiatric team to see me and they prescribed diazepam which really calmed my system down. Until that happened I was still very physically ill.
I've been doing alot of thinking and surely if a person feels that amount of panic over a very long period of time or many years their heart rate would rise, yet would there come a point where the heart itself becomes exhausted/worn out?
I wondered if there is any medical evidence of this? or if anyone else has suffered similar.
Thanks :)