Do any doctors still post here?

[ZEE]

Is that anything like Homosexuality?

If so I think that might just be right up Lori's alley! Good idea Gribbler!

[Lorizael]

Homeopathy makes up 10^-100 of my medical care so that it's as effective as possible.

[DirtyMartini]

What were your blood pressure and heart rate in the ambulance?

[Lorizael]

Hmm, I don't seem to have those numbers. I know the EMTs rattled them off at one point, but I was not really with it at the time and don't remember them.

[Egbert]

Is that anything like Homosexuality?

If so I think that might just be right up Lori's alley! Good idea Gribbler!

I am quoting this poast so everyone who has AAHZ on ignore can see it.

[DirtyMartini]

The blood draw episode certainly sounds like a vasovagal episode (as you were told) which is super common in response to blood draws, particularly in young men. You feel sweaty and nauseated. You lose your peripheral vision then "faint". Heart rate and blood pressure are both low (which is why I asked, but really by the time the ambo got there your vitals would almost certainly have normalized). If your initial episode felt like like the blood draw episode, you're probably right and it was also a vasovagal episode.

Chest pain usually isn't part of a vasovagal reaction so that probably requires further explanation. Unfortunately the causes of chest pain are multitudinous. Anxiety is indeed a very common cause. If you were in NSR in the ambulance and everything checked out in the ER it is unlikely to have been a significant cardiac event.

Keep the cardiology appt. but I'd be surprised if this turned out to be due to coronary artery disease, even with a family history. Easier said than done, but I'd try not to sweat it too much.

[The Mad Monk]

Something like that happened to me once when donating blood -- they had put the needle in, and I had been lying there for a while but the little bag didn't seem to be filling, though I didn't think much of it at the time. Gradually I started to feel kinda weird, so decided to attract the nurse: "Nurse? Nurse? I think somethings wroooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnng..." I heard myself stretching out that last word like that, then I sorta blanked. I turned out that when they put the needle in, it skewered the vein -- went straight through -- which was why the pouch wasn't filling. I think I got a nice bruise from that.

[Lorizael]

As an update: Appointment with cardiologist turned up nothing. They did a nuclear stress test (which I decided to write about as a form of stress relief), echocardiogram, and 24 hour heart monitor. So whatever this was, it apparently wasn't a cardiac thing. The only thing out of the ordinary is that the blood tests done at the ER showed my blood sugar was a little high, which is probably a little weird given I was there in the middle of the night and hadn't eaten since early that afternoon.

The bigger thing, though, is that it's been almost a month and I've been experiencing basically constant anxiety and stress the whole time. I go to bed and wake up anxious. My face hurts all the time from tension. It's been better than the first week, when I wasn't eating or sleeping or concentrating, but it's still pretty bad and not like anything I've ever experienced before. I am apparently unable to go out to dinner at a loud, crowded restaurant anymore--which was never a comfortable situation for me--because I start to shut down. The last time I did so, it got so bad that I ran out of the place and then broke down in a parking garage and started crying uncontrollably. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before in my life. I do not lose my composure in public.

So yeah. I don't know what the **** is wrong with me. Maybe I should post more.

[ZEE]

Lori wishes he was schizophrenic. Let me tell you something, boy...

You think you know fear? Try hearing rattlesnakes in the middle of the night. Try ignoring the fact you think you are a living god with your brain making obscure connections supporting the fact every day.

You think AAHZ a scared skit, Lori? AAHZ ****ing Charles Manson, boy.

Enjoy your normality.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Not cool, AAHZ.

[Pekka]

Tempted not to say anything as no doctor here... buuuut... sounds like a mild heart attack (ruled out) or possible panic attack. If the blood work did not show anything in particular, then that should rule out deficiencies in most obvious things, maybe lots of stress lately? Prone to panic attacks? Or just a virus, that can always take a person down for no apparent reason never to be diagnosed with anything specific.

[ZEE]

Not cool, AAHZ.

What's the problem? Lori wishes he was schizo and AS ONE I thought I'd explain a little bit of what it is like. AAHZ don't mince words.

And aren't you the one who I have told like 38 times that I am Schizophrenic and bi-polar, and you forget after each time I tell you and then act all shocked when I explain it again? Not cool BU.

[pchang]

Definitely anxiety. It may be time to try to get over your reluctance to take prescription meds.

[Lorizael]

Several years back, I was prescribed an anti-anxiety drug to take as needed. It was never made entirely clear to me what "as needed" really meant, so once when I was feeling mildly anxious at work, I took one. Then I sat around freaking out over whether I was really anxious enough to merit having taken one, whether something bad might happen when I didn't really need to take it, if I could develop an addiction by popping one whenever I felt slightly tense, etc. Eventually I felt nauseated, went to the bathroom, and vomited up the pill. Never took one again.

[pchang]

Wow, you had a pretty crappy doctor.