I should preface this with, I know I am blessed. I know I have food on my plate and a roof over my head and family and friends that love and support me. I know I should be grateful for all of that and not complain, I know this but in actuality, I'm gonna complain a little.
When I was 7 my dad had a heart attack and died. Sad yes but bad things happen, I grew up, I've moved on. In the past couple of years I have had aches and pains and stuff and had my heart checked a couple times. Usually they put a couple leads on my chest, check me out, yup your fine, quit being a baby. In the mist of all that I had a diseased gallbladder and they took that out and I felt relief for a while. That was right after The Princess was born, so almost 7 years ago.
A year and a half ago, while I was building my house (literally, I hammered nails and lifted walls and placed tiles and all that fun stuff0 I started to get this pain in my chest, between my breasts right where my bras sits, sometimes a little lower. It felt sometimes as if my boobs were too big and pulling me down, and if I could just stretch my chest I would feel better. I headed to the Doctor and they suggested I had heart burn, quit the caffeine (sad I love Diet coke) and watch what I eat. that worked for a little while. then the pain came back, they gave me a drug to take everyday to lessen the acid in my stomach, that worked for a while.
But the pain kept coming back, all this while I was thinking "I sure hope its not my heart, that would really suck" but I was in discussions with doctors who knew my family history, I was having my cholesterol (its a tinsy bit high) and blood pressure (perfect!) taken regularly and I was always trying to loose weight (I'm big girl). That all eased my mind at the time.
The pain kept coming back and in December of last year I was in tons of pain and every once in a while my heart would speed and then I would have a release of adrenalin. I hate the feeling of adrenalin like that so again, off to the doctors I go he claims I have PVC's. Where the pacemaker of my individual heart cells was misfiring and creating an extra heart beat. all completely normal, most likely caused by caffeine and my weight (yes I still loved Diet Coke, I was an addict) so I cold turkey cut out all caffeine, even carbonation because that was causing so much of my heart burn. It was hard but I never want to feel that way again. Still 7 months later I haven't had so much as a sip of Diet Coke.
This whole time I was flitting around between two or three different doctors depending on their availability and my proximity to them at the time.
January I started seeing a new doctor, well nurse practitioner really. She is awesome. We shall call her Dr. J.
It was about this time I started to have anxiety. I would lay in bed at night and think, what if the pain in chest I just dismiss as heart burn is really something else? What if I go to bed tonight and have a heart attack and my kids find me in the morning, would Princess know who to call? They will end up with the Ex, not only is their life traumatized by finding their dead mother, now they have to live with him! What if I am alone and my cats eat me before anyone find me?
Yeah, I know, sick, but these were my nightly thoughts. I went to bed every night praying, "please God, let me wake up in the morning"
Then with the increased pain Dr. J suggested an Upper GI Scope where they look at my esophagus and my stomach and my upper intestines to make sure there was no hernia or ulcer or anything like that. I had the scope done and low and behold there is a Hiatel Hernia. Yeah problem solved fix it right?
Wrong, they just give me more drugs and tell me to live with it, I will be on them the rest of my life. I was fine for a while, knowing I had pain, knowing I should expect pain, knowing it was a hernia and not my heart. Then one day my shoulder hurt I think, and the anxiety kicked back in. All the What if questions were back, and they were not just at night, they were during the day too.
I spoke with Dr. J, she gave me some meds to take when I feel the anxiety coming on, and they help me focus, help stop the flood of the what if questions, help stop the freight train of fear they cause.
While dealing with the anxiety, she also wanted to make sure there was nothing to worry about, she ran some blood test , one in particular that was a predictor of cardiovascular inflammation. Normal is anything 3 or below, mine came back at 4. She checked my cholesterol again it hadn't changed, even with the addition of exercise (I started running, go me!) and fish oil (gotta love those Omega 3's) so she suggested I meet with a cardiologist, just to be sure everything was fine. I made the appointment. In the mean time I started having shortness of breath, headaches and a little dizziness. Nothing too bad, sometimes it wasn't even a problem, sometimes I could hardly get a deep breath so I went back in to Dr. J thinking it was just the anxiety again.
This last appointment was yesterday, the 24th. We talked about how it really could be just the anxiety, most likely was, we talked about ways to feel better and what I should do and how I can handle it, then just to be sure, lets take a chest x-ray.
Last year I had pneumonia so I had one done then too, now my heart is bigger. I have an enlarged heart. It is most likely causing my shortness of breath (not the anxiety, but trust me that's in full gear too) and my headaches and dizziness. I have no idea what caused it, no idea how to fix it, no idea about any of it.
Googling is out the question, if I thought I was dying before, webMD would leave no doubt, only it would tell me I had lupus or something.
Basically I am scared shit less, and part of being single is when I am scared shit less there is no one to share that fear, no one to reassure me, no one to hold my hand as Dr. J makes calls and pulls string and tries to get me in with the cardiologist ASAP and schedules a stress echo to figure out what the hell is going on. I have told no one besides Dr. J the entirety of my fear and I feel like I just need somewhere to express it, to say it all out loud, so your welcome Internet.
You now know more than my mother
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