pb's Health anxiety worries thread

[pb]

Really worried about stress echo, has anyone has this. Getting lots of chest pain since I got the letter today.

[nomorepanic]

Is this the MIBI scans ? Where you have to eat a lot of fatty food ?

[nomorepanic]

Correction - I don't think it is.

What is the stress ECG then? What do they do?

[pb]

Correction - I don't think it is.

What is the stress ECG then? What do they do?

It’s the stress exercise echo, I’m hoping there is an alternative.

[nomorepanic]

Yeah I have done one of them.

[pb]

I’m spiralling really badly tonight. I keep waking up with bad headaches and last night every time I went to go asleep, I felt that I couldn’t breath, so I had hardly any sleep. I fell asleep this afternoon while watching tv and didn’t have this.
Not sure while Im Getting the headaches.
Really Worried about the echo, I’m going to ask gp if I can have something else that doesn’t involve the exercise.

[pb]

I can’t stop worrying about my heart, I’ve had so many ecgs, but it was the last two that were abnormal.
GP told me a couple of weeks ago that she thinks my tests will be ok, but the cardiologist obviously thinks there’s a problem if they want to do a exercise echo. I can’t have this, but I don’t want to ignore heart disease, I really hope they let me have another scan.
Thankfully , I didn’t wake up with a headache and managed to sleep last night. When I feel stressed, I keep getting chest pain, this must be angina.
Sorry to keep on, my friend who I usually confide is, is still on holiday.

[nomorepanic]

It is highly unlikely to be angina and trust me you do not want to have all the tests I had for that - they are far worse than just walking on a treadmill for minutes.

Why won't you have the test?

[glassgirlw]

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that PB doesn’t want the exercise echo because exercising causes the heart rate to increase which in turn will spike the anxiety and fear that a heart attack is imminent. I say this because I 100% feel the same way, so I get it. Rationally I know that I’m in the safest place should the worst case scenario happen (all those heart docs on hand and handily enough, in the hospital), but that is tough to get those rational thoughts to override the anxiety thoughts. I understand, PB. Unfortunately I think there will come a time that you just have to suck it up and realize that thousands upon thousands of people have had these tests and everything works just as it should. Not to mention, in the extreme off chance that there is an issue (which I think is HIGHLY unlikely here), then they can make a plan to resolve the issue. The more likely result will be everything is fine.

[nomorepanic]

I had mine a few weeks after having had a heart attack so they wouldn't do that if they thought I was going to drop dead of another one.