Sometime in 2003, I was sitting aboard an airplane nearing the end of my flight coming home from California. The plane had hit some turbulence and at one point seemed to drop for several second before catching the wind again. Everyone on the plane seemed to be freaking out, and I was no exception. I already have an (irrational?) fear of flying, and pretty much anything happening aboard a plane scares me.
I felt my heart skip in my chest and was filled with an empty sinking feeling. The feeling continued even after things had calmed down, but eventually subsided. At the time, I didn't think anything of it. Within the next few weeks, I felt the same feeling again - this time lying on my back in my bedroom. I was suddenly aware of my heart more than I had ever been, I could feel it beating throughout my body. Mostly, I could notice that the rhythm of my heart was not constant, in fact it was all over the place.
Although this worried me, I waited it out and eventually forgot about it. I had been under considerable stress at the time and figured it was just my body telling me to chill out a bit.
Some time later, I was going up on a camping trip with a friend. as we drove into the mountains the feeling returned. In fact, in between this time and the time in my bedroom, I had felt it a couple times. This time it was worse though, I began having a hard time breathing. I began to panic.
I tried to calm down as I called my insurance company to see if they had someone I could talk to for medical advice. They told me to pull over and call an ambulance. Having had experiences with ambulances in the past, I instead asked my friend to turn around and take me to the hospital.
The doctors hooked me up to a EKG and watched my heart for some time. The frustrating thing is that once I got into the hospital I felt much better. As if being around doctors made me feel more relaxed and my heart went back to normal.
The doctor confirmed that I had an arrhythmia (irregular heart beat) but that it was probably nothing to worry about. He did suggest I wear a 24 loop monitor (basically a 24 hour portable EKG) just to make sure. I was to push a button every time I felt something weird happening and they would look at it later to see what it was.
The test revealed a few different types of abnormal heart beats, but nothing serious they said. Around this time I also had my blood tested to see if it was possible a problem with my thyroid. No tests showed anything to be concerned about.
However, my problems persisted and even seemed to worsen. I saw another doctor who ordered a ultrasound of my heart to see if there was anything structurally wrong and that we needed to worry about. Again, the test showed nothing out of the ordinary.
After symptoms continued to worsen, I once again sought help - this time from a cardiologist. It took several weeks to get an appointment, but finally I was able to visit him. The doctor spent about 20 seconds with me. He walked into the room and said "Look, I'll save you a bunch of money - go get treated for anxiety." I wasn't sure what evidence he had that there was nothing to worry about, as I hadn't even talked to him yet, but clearly he wasn't interested in chatting about my problem.
I went back to my family doctor and told him what the cardiologist said. He put me on 20mg lexapro for about six months. While this didn't seem to make the problem go away, it did do a good job of making me care less about it. I'm not sure what the cardiologist was thinking, though: anxiety is causing my heart problem, or my heart problem is causing anxiety?
At any rate, the problem never went away.
The insurance company initially denied my first hospital visit but soon realized they couldn't well deny it when they were the ones who made me go.
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