Cardiac and neurological symptoms..

Scroll to see replies

Reply 20

lucho22

The symptoms started about a week before that with numbness in the middle finger on my right hand. My hands began to get really cold. Then a couple of nights later I got up from the computer at about 2 a.m and my heart started racing (i mean really pumping like crazy) - I was gasping for breath. Went to bed and woke up with things just the same shortness of breath and almost passed out a couple of times during the day. Went to the GP who diagnosed me with tachycardia and high blood pressure (140 over 110) caused by anxiety and prescribed Propranolol and an anti-anxiety pill called Xanax (the patronising bastard fobbed me off with old people medicine and crazy people medicine). This cured the tachycardia. But I was still feeling really bad with a general malaise and the numbness had spread over both hands and my arms were really weak lifting things that I usually found no problem were a real effort (still feeling a bit like this and my fingers are still feeling funny). Got back to London and had the episide before Christmas dinner where it felt like the blood was going to pop out of the arteries in my neck and again I couldn't breath properly with tightness in the chest (but this time no tachycardia). Got a reading of 170 over 110 which made the nurse in the UCLH emergency room give me a startled look. Then they got me to take an ECG and hooked me up to a heart monitor - took neurological symptoms and blood tests which all came back normal. Then I went to the Cardiologist after new year who ordered more tests (Echo and Catecholamine) and referred me to a Neurologist at the Queen Square National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery (on the day I got my Cambridge pooling... :frown:

). He sent me for an MRI (Brain and C-Spine) where they had me interminably in that infernal tube (injecting me with Magnevist imaging agent). Results came back with a suspected lipoma in my neck(which he said not to worry about but to get checked when I got back). I am awaiting the Catecholamine test which should be in tomorrow...

This has been going on a month now - so I really doubt that it's all anxiety...

Firstly, your GP was not being a patronising bastard - he was treating you for tachycardia (the propranolol) and anxiety (which you clearly also had at that point). Anxiolytics are hardly "crazy people medicine."

It may not be just anxiety-related, although people do have attacks like that which are serious - it's not just "a bit of worry." I'd say a specialist neuro hospital would have a lot more expertise on the subject than us lot though, so I'd go with whatever they say.

As for the lipoma, sounds like it's incidental. Nothing to stress yourself about.