Hello. I'm new to the forum. As a quick introduction, I'm 22 years old, suffer from OCD and SAD, which I both battle with on therapy and my own time. I've also had palpitations for years, I think they started when I was around 14. Due to my (mostly dealt with) hypochondria, I know quite a lot about heart palpitations. I'm not an expert obviously, but I learned to live with them, and the anxiety they produce. More than a year ago however, they got worse. Instead of an occasional pounding, I developed a run of palpitations (3 to about 8 in a row). At first they terrified me, but I learned to cope with them too, more or less. I noticed most of them come from stress and stomach (I have GERD, and experience a lot of palps after certain foods or overeating). Then one week ago, I experienced a massive amount of them - I was bending over with a full stomach (this pressure is causing the palpitations too, mainly after eating) and I don't know exactly how many of them, but much more than usual. With that came the burping and heartburn. After several burps it passed. It scared me, but I managed the fear quite quickly. My main reason for writing here though, is because of what happened yesterday night. So, I ate two hot-dogs at 7 PM with lots of ketchup and some other sauce (yeah, I know...), which was making my stomach go more or less crazy for many hours after that. With this came palpitations, but it was "the usual stuff". Then at 2 AM I got over-excited watching a movie - I felt a big pound. Then two normal beats and another pound. One beat and a pound. Then two or three normal beats and again a pound, etc. It was palpitations galore, it just wouldn't stop. And these thumps were much stronger than usual too. I remember calming down, saying to myself "ok, it will pass now, just stay calm". It always helped, but not this time. I was calm and it still wouldn't stop. I started forcefully burping (seeing as it helped in the situation one week ago) and doing a Valsalva maneuver - don't know which one of them helped, but it finally stopped. The whole thing lasted for about 15-20 seconds. That's a lot considering that I had such intense palpitations for 5 seconds at most before. After that I got two more palpitations with a lot of normal beats in between and that was it. I had the "feeling of dying" many times with my panic attacks, but to be honest it was nothing compared to that. In this case, I seriously thought I am going to die. It was so scary I can't even describe it. Due to the palpitations happening almost one after another, I don't even know if these were PACs or PVCs anymore. I don't know, maybe it was an afib? I really don't know. I'm scared. I woke up at 6 AM and was shaking and trembling, couldn't sleep for the next two hours. Had to take a day off because I'm really not too good today, to say the least.
One quick afterthought about this - I know it's my fault that I I ate what I ate, my sleep schedule is sometimes messed up too... But still, I can't explain to myself that it's just that.
Now a few words about health regarding my heart. I was tested many, many times. On ECG it never showed anything, but had a Holter monitor 2 times and there were a few PVCs, PACs, short non-sustained tachycardia runs... Nothing serious. Ultrasonography 3 times. Nothing too. All clear. Apart from that many visits and casual tests. It doesn't help that the worst palpitations I had were never registered on anything. It's hard to do that tough, because while I may have heart palpitations every other day or so, the really scary ones happen from at least a week apart from each other, sometimes months even. It came down to the point though that I don't really trust my cardiologist anymore. I mean, how can I be healthy when something like this happens? What if I have some serious arrhythmia which left untreated will kill me all of a sudden? At least that's what I keep asking myself after such situations. I know I shouldn't, but it's hard not to.
My questions for you is - do you experience such intense palpitations? Do you have runs of them or have them happening almost one after another? Do you have such "palpitations attack" as described above or similar? Is it really all in my head and anxiety problem? Please help.
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