Professional Member
Went to the doc friday and was telling him about a couple of spells I had last month...
Both mowing the yard..... chest got real tight and there was a burning sensation...like I had never experienced....very intense...... didnt go into my arms but my shoulders experienced some discomfort.
First time I blew off as severe indijestion but I was lying to myself because I had never experienced indigestion like that before. I had eaten some very strong onion for supper that night...so that was my excuse.
Second time I had not eaten since lunch and lunch was a single McDonalds McChicken sandwich. Same exact pains....lasted a few minutes and after both times I continued mowing....and feeling no more pain.
After I mentioned having those spells my doc jumped up and made me tell him everything I just mentioned then went to the door and called for an EKG..which turned out OK..... then he scheduled me for a treadmill test tuesday morning....and I gotta go back in 3 weeks...for a physical too....
He mentioned angina.....and gave me a prescription for nitroglycerin.
anyone ever had angina ??? I always thought that was a bad cholesterol related thing and my cholesterol level has always been fine...my doc brags on it every time I get mine checked. Must be the gallon of coffee I flush through my system each day....lol
I was sorta worried about this when those spells happened...but I left my docs office feeling sick... He seemed very concerned about the whole thing...and now Im worried too..
Carrying nitroglycerin.....told me if I have one of those spells again to take one and call 911. Hope it dont come to that.....cause..and Im just an uneducated bumpkin here....I feel like...and hope...that it was only severe indijestion...
I remember my mom having a heart attack years ago and she didnt know she had a heart attack till a day or so after..... her elbows are all that hurt her but she also got sick....when she was taken to the doc it was determined that she had a pretty bad one...
Her heart was badly damaged...she lived 25 years though...many more than the docs said she had.... had a triple bypass...a pacemaker....and then some new fangled thing installed a few years ago that was monitored by the hospital and would deliver shocks via computer or radio or both...
My brother is 54 and has had 2 heart attacks...both of them before age 50....
anyhow.... just throwing that out there..... its really weird... I knew I had to mention it to my doc....but I never expected him to freak out the way he did.
Ive sorta felt sick all weekend...depressed now....
dreading that treadmill test too.....~:>
Professional Member
don't sweat it, corny. your mind will and does create more symptoms if you let it. get it fixed first, and worry about the fallout later. doctors seem to have a tendency to over diagnose.
i just had an icd implanted, and i'm only 49, with no known family history of heart problems. i have not had the treadmill stress test, i had the nuclear one. my imagination had 6 days to really run wild, up to and including not surviving. i feel much better now and can't wait to get cleared for work
Professional Member
Certainly sounds like you have the family history. Just use this as an early warning to be careful. Don't let the small symptoms go until it's too late. If you feel bad, go to the doc and have it checked out. I think angina is a doctor's "catch-all" term for chest pain.
I, on the other hand, have high cholesterol with no family history of heart disease. I try not to worry about it and take the Lipitor. I don't eat out much either.
Control what you can and don't get bogged down by being depressed or worried about it. Good Luck!
You can't learn a thing with your mouth open.
Professional Member
similar situation for me. at 42 i had an episode one afternoon that lasted well into the the wee hours of the following morning. after being up all night without my wife knowing anything i felt i had no choice but to wake her and have her take me to the hospital. we got there at about 3 a.m. and they immediately life flighted me to a larger and better equipped hospital about 2 hours away, at the time we were living in Kansas. I dont remember very much for the next three days however my wife says it seemed i was relatively coherent. test's and more test's and it was determined that I have congestive heart failure probably as a result of a virus that somehow landed in my heart and killing the muscle. they measure your heart by it's "ejection fraction" mine being about 30% once stable. they put me on several medications, limited fluid intake, virtually no salt in diet and told to exercise etc. all fine and good till june of 08 when it reared its ugly head again and after more testing my ejection fraction had further reduced to slightly below 25%. i was told it was as a result of my heart struggling to beat, more like a quiver causing further muscle death. they installed a de-fibrillator to stop it from misbehaving and it is read via the phone line once a month by me to them. i have not had any trouble since and go in every 6 months since to have it monitored and a hands on look. short of being too young for any of this it is not something that i consciencously deal with everyday. just dont ignore "odd" symptoms and try to stay ahead of the curve. I will be 50 on the 8th of december and they say now i should be fine with this making sure my heart does not misbehave causing further damage.
Professional Member
wow polaris!!!!!!!!!!! sounds like my case. had a bout with bell's palsy (a viral infection of the facial nerves causing partial paralysis) 1 week before collapsing in the yard (syncope). determined my ejection fraction was in the 25% range. i'm hooking up the phone monitor today (ain't that kind of an invasion of privacy?) you've been 'wired' for 8 years now. if i may ask, what drugs are you on, and do they decrease/ eliminate dosages. i hate taking pills
Regular Guest
Professional Member
I think they are going to inject me with something...xray me....then the treadmill and xray me again.....
I hope I do well..... I have bad knees and I think I fractured my ankle a while back...and its healed wrong or something....lol
But Im going to give it my all...
I hope he is overeacting...but it was a pain that Ive never experienced before.. I say that I thought it was indigstion.....but it was indigestion like Ive never had before... and then 2 times that close together....
thanks
Professional Member*
One time my aging mom went to the Dr. complaining of chest pains.
He told her she had acute angina...........and she slapped him in the face.
I know, old joke but it fit right in.....didn't it?
Good luck with that, it isn't anything to wait on, thats for sure.
Hey cockroach, don't bug me! ©
Professional Member
sounds like you are not going on a treadmill. sounds like a nuclear stress test. a two part test, where they hook you up and establish a baseline. then they inject you with drugs to race your heart and a radioactive tracer so they can get a picture. it's not bad. i rather do that than 'walk the green mile'Originally Posted by corny
they gave me one 3 years ago when my knee hand grenaded, and a month ago
Professional Member
oh, and, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaa - dice!
Professional Member
they put the defibrillator in june of 08 so i have "been wired" for about a year and a half. the medications are, coreg, simvastatin, potassium, a diuretic, baby aspirin, carvedilol, spironolactone and zestril and the doses have kind of stayed the same for the eight years i have been on them. a few times they have changed them but i would say not much. i dont know if you take coreg but when it went generic it saved me about 350.00 a month just that pill. i have asked them why they have me on cholesterol medications and they say even though my cholesterol is fine they compliment the other medications allowing my heart to relax i guess. oh well its tuesday a.m. and i woke up, so they must be working. ha.
Professional Member
wow, you're on alot. they got me on coreg, 6.25mg and linsinopril, 10mg twice a day. also (1) 325mg aspirin daily.
coreg is that much????????? i'm with a plan that meds are significantly less
Regular Guest
I couldn't stand the 325 mg aspirin so I do the 81 mg [because of a blood clot in a leg vein and because I have a slight genetic predisposition to clotting].
You guys must have enormous medical bills.
Professional Member
Nitroglycerin is to knock your blood pressure down, I believe it dilates yuor blood vessels. Reason you need to call EMS, is one pill may not be enough. Also some get a huge headache, like someone hit them in the top of the head with a frying pan. I get Chest wall pain from an injury, my pain is either a 1 or a 10, no in between. Been to the ER with Chest pains, BP through the roof, and given the max of Nitro, to get it down. Never had a headache from it. Doc said I got one Hell of a tough heart, but lets not test it like that again.
When you go to the Doctor take someone with you to take notes, as a patient, you only grasp about fifth of what the Doctor tells you.
Professional Member
I took my test today.... I guess it was nuclear..
They injected me with thallium thru an IV and then made me sit and watch tv a while.....then took pictures of my heart with some gamma machine...that looks like some kind of stone age mri....then I rested and walked on the treadmill for about 10 minutes.....then sat and watched more tv.....then took more pictures.
I had a bad headache when I left and I barely made it to the house without sh*tting all over myself...lol
I dont know if it was that stuff they shoot in you, the stress of the stress test...or something else Ive picked up but Ive had the "splats" ever since I got home.
my stomach hurts.........
Anyhow...Im glad its over...... 3 and 1/2 hours once you get back there and most of that time is sitting in a room watching tv...
I should have brought a book....
Again......I hope its nothing.... I did good on the treadmill in my opinion... I was worried that I would either have a heart attack there...or that my ankle or one of my knees would give out and Id end up in the floor...
Regular Guest
When pressed, my doctor quoted a price of $1500 for this test, so I declined.
"Thallium is highly toxic and is used in rat poisons and insecticides, but its use has been cut back or eliminated in many countries. Because of its use for murder, thallium has gained the nicknames "The Poisoner's Poison" and "Inheritance Powder" (alongside arsenic)."
"radioactive thallium-201 (half-life of 73 hours) is used for diagnostic purposes in nuclear medicine, particularly in stress tests used for risk stratification in patients with coronary artery disease A(CAD)."
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...e&ved=0CAcQkAE
Professional Member
glad all went well (except for the part about the saddle gravy), dont know enough about them but when i had my nuclear stress test, it was sitting up and laying down but no treadmill. i have had the treadmill test but to be honest cant remember if i had an iv with dye or anything else for that matter.
you know what they say brain 1st and what went 2nd ? i cant remember.
i hope when your results come back that all looks good.
p.s. you might want to sleep in some sort of undergarment tonight.
Professional Member
The cholesterol medication does not affect the heart. If its a "statin" it works with the liver on how your body processes "lipids". They are most likely giving it to you just to keep your LDL's lower. The lower the better but you actually need HDL to be in check also. I'm not a doc but I have worked for one doing many things for several years, Even give shots from time to time. He won't do it because he's afraid of needles. Great doctor but real quirky.
Professional Member
Even back pain can be a warning sign for a MI.
It can manifest itself in several ways. By brother in law had a MI several years back. Sick at his stomach and back pain. At first they thought it was a Kidney stone but then he started to turn a little grey,, He made it. He had the "Big one" while undergoing a heart cath but he lived. Now he is a even bigger @$$&ole.
Professional Member
You need to find someone with Modern equipment. I had a nuclear scan done on my whole body, orthopedic sent me for leg pain, they got the script rewritten for the whole body, as it's cheaper. I had to lie on something that looked like an upside down racing Scull. They did a quick look to make sure I had no background radiation. Got a small syringe of the "dye", they scanned my body, told me I could leave for two hours, just keep moving. Came back, and they rescanned me. BTW; Civista in La Plata did the work, I go there for all my blood work, stress test, X-rays. It's nice because everything is there, its new, care is top notch, and you go from one station to another, rather than running all over town.
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