Age 18 Chest Pain :( - Heart Disorders Message Board

tangerinedream8 · 09-02-2004, 05:03 PM

Hi, I've been recently getting chest pain. I've also been getting shortness of breath and sometimes dizzy. My brother told me he thinks they are just anxiety attacks.. but to be sure I went to the hospital one night where they gave me a cardiogram, blood test and x-ray. My blood pressure was 120/80.. and the nurse said that my heart was prefectly fine from looking at the cardiogram and x-rays.. the only thing that worried the doctor was I had a high white blood cell count. The pain hasnt gone away.. It's mostly in my back area but sometimes goes down my arm.. down the side of my chest.. to the front of my chest and over to the right side a little. I've had a very fast pulse.. it hasnt slowed down.. and well just this chest pain wont go away.. it scares me. My doctor gave me Ativan I think for stress-relief..but i still find my pulse to be really fast and i still get a a bit of chest pain.. I'm jsut so worried that it is my heart and they arent checking me right.. I don't know what my choloesterol level is.. and I am obese.. but I'm been exercising since March and lost weight and dont understand where these pains are comign from.. Ive stopped going to the gym completely because of fear it will cause a heart attack.. does anyone what this may be? im desperate to hear opinions.. this is really frightening.. Someone said that it may be blood clots.. but I dont smoke.. and someone else said it might have to do with my gall bladder.. i dont know what it is..
Any help would be very very appreciated.

matthewinuk · 09-06-2004, 06:01 AM

about the gym - when you go, making sure you warm down properly means you don't need to worry so much about heart attacks, the major concern would be taht you're working away at the whole body and then stop suddenly.

When exercising, your muscles help squeeze your blood around by squishing your veins, if you stop suddenly, all the work has to be done by your heart, by warming down, you help your heart to play catch-up woth the left over oxygen demand

matthewinuk · 09-06-2004, 06:03 AM

oh, and i wouldn't worry too much about the chest pain and breathlessness, I have the same sometimes, and usually put it down to stress or anxiety, if you worry too much it will seem worse.... doctors wouldn't deliberatly not test you properly. promise

AugustPt1 · 09-06-2004, 04:49 PM

I had similar problems with the pain you're describing and it turns out I have what's called a Patent Foreman Ovale (PFO). It's a hole in the heart that should have closed up after birth but didn't. It can eventually cause a minor stroke if it's not taken care of which it did to me last month. After I had the stroke they found the problem and I'm finally meeting with a specialist this week to determine what they want to do about. For now they've put me on blood thinners to keep blood flowing smooth and to avoid getting any blood clots as a result.

It's quite possible that you have something completely unrelated to this but you might ask them to do a transesophageal echocardiography just to be on the safe side. It's a test where they send a tube down you esophagus and use ultrasound waves to detect abnormal tissue growth around the heart valves and abnormalities in the pattern of blood flow, such as the backward flow of blood through partly closed heart valves. They ran a ton of tests on me and found nothing and they ended up writing me off as having anxiety. It wasn't until I went to get a second opinion that the doctors ran this test.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me. I'd be more than willing to answer any questions you have.

JJ52 · 09-10-2004, 08:49 AM

I have two buldging discs in my neck. When I do certain exercises it puts pressure on the nerve and a week later I have a shooting pain down the left arm with tingling in the index finger. Twice it happened. Both times after returning from a business trip where I worked out in the hotel exercise room.

The symptoms were similar a heart attack.

What made it hard to isolate the cause is that the pain occurred a week after the exercise.

The doctor (md) thought it was a vitamin deficiency and ordered blood tests. They were negative.

A chiropractor identified the problem. A physical therapist identified the exercise that puts pressure on that disc.

Do you have a history of back or neck pain?