Started having heart issues.

Heart health and blood vessels
1

3yrs ago started occassional dizzy spells and groggy feelings in morning. About this time right arm pain caused me to go into shock Pain was between shoulder and elbow outside of arm.

Collesteroll check put me on Statins (Atarovastain 40mg) but started having muscle aches so left off since then. Want ot go back on to reduce Coll. but read on.

About 3 mths ago (just after stopping Statins) woke up 3am by all round upper chest pain. lasted about 3 mins. Put it down to the Statins but now realise this was more likely a Heart Attack albeit a small one. Did nothing at the time.

That arm pain is now also in the left arm and have to be careful how I move my arms otherwise it ramps right up.

Felt dizzy one evening and notice heart readings were 175/90 with 90 beat. Usually I am 145/65. Went to Hostpital had ECG which confirmed Heart Attack history and no other blood warnings though. Discharged.

Recently now getting quick angina type pains aroud upper torso and sometime in left arm. Once out walking got chest pains for 10 mins. Daily now I get these "twinges" with occassional twinge in neck.

My conclusion is that I am developing the unstable angina with possible Heart Attack likey as before. Due to consult with Dr. next week.

Thing is no good going to hospital without some positive indication that anything is wrong!

Any comment or advice welcome.

 

2

My wife gets pains like that caused by costochondritis and a rotovator shoulder problem.

3

Thanks to Derek76. Hmm, point taken pretty sure it's not that due the the other factors relating and occurring.  I forgot to mention I've had the odd cough associated. I don't usually get such coughs and have not got a related infection.

4

You chest pains don't all sound cardiac related. Are you taking any medication that could cause the cough as a side effect?

5

DO NOT take any chest pain with a grain of salt.

A Doctor told me he would have been delighted if my severe chest pain had been indigestion, but it wasn't, it was fluid trapped between my heart muscle and the sack the heart sits in, and if I had left it any longer it could have become much more serious, treated by giving me drugs that dried up the fluid, and also treated the inflmation that was causing the fluid to form.

In reply to rotator cuff pain, husband had the same pain diagnosed as rotator cuff, then arthritis, then damaged muscle in upper arm, turned out to be his heart, he has dialated cardiomyopathy and also left branch bundle blockage (thats the electricial nerves) that make your heart beat correctly, even senior cardiologists junior housman missed what was going on.

I kept on insisting that the pain was coming from his heart, dismissed with a comment to the effect are you a Dr. 

Got back at junior houseman a few days later by explaining to the senior cardio specialist, and pointed at the housman standing next to him, ''he said'', senior cardio told me I was right in front of junior dr's it was his heart, an obsure diagnoses and a little unusual to only have cramping pain in bicep but not impossible.

Spoke to GP some weeks later and he said how did I miss that, I told him I would also like to know if there is any mention in the text books, he found a 3 line entry in one of his cardio books, rotator cuff pain being heart in reality, he showed me the entry, we both now know my instincts were on the right track all along.

Spoke to my sister/sibling, very senior hospital nurse, and she has said I would trust your ability with diagnoses, your own father had undiagnosed dilated cardiomyopathy your entire life, so you know what it is, and understand even at an unconcious level when he is failing, now my husband has the same unforntunatly.

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It is amazing how doctors can share similar traits in different parts of the world.  I live in the U.S amd some of the doctors have asked their patients if they are doctors when that patient questions their diagnosis or judgement.  I was suffering from heart failure due to a heart attack that went undiagnosed three years earlier.  At the time I was a little over

40 years old and was employed as a U.S postal carrier.  When I told my superiors that I was not able to come to work because I felt dreadful, they ended up sending me to their own postal doc, who they thought would clear me for work, they were wrong, she took one listen to my lungs and said, "they sound horrible", and then she listened to my chest and informed me that she heard a "third heart sound".  She said I needed to get these concerns addressed immediately, and until then she was not clearing me to return to work.  When I went to a cardiologist shortly after seeing her and told him what she observed during my exam, he just laughed (like an idiot), and then said, "whats a 

third heart sound"  I assumed from that response that he most likely graduated at the bottom of his class.  He was not aware, nor did I bother to inform him that I was quite well read with regard to cardiac medicine (I even have my own library of cardiac textbooks), and yes, a third heart sound can and often is a normal finding in a patient under 40 years of age, but I was over 40, had already had an echo done a few months earlier that showed a pleural effussion, and was experiencing frothy sputum at this time.  These are "red flags" for heart failure.  I still cannot believe that subsequent cardiologists either didn't know or didn't want to make the first cardiologist look stupid by contradicting his dx.  He actually only dxed me with hypertension, which I was already aware of and said I might have a "touch of bronchitis".  Needless to say,

I never returned to him.  I've come to the conclusion that medical professionals do not want and do not appreciate it when laypeople educate themselves to the point where they are almost on par with them.  I'm glad for you that the senior cardiologist recognized that you were on the right track.