So, no one here is my doctor, and I won’t blame anyone for advice that doesn’t work (although I may roll my eyes at you if your advice involved oils or chakras) (and if your advice is “lose weight”, please note I will roundly ignore you)
Next point - I have gone to a cardiologist who did an EKG, then a chemical stress test. His evaluation is that my heart is strong and there is no damage there.
I started having pain in my chest area after Thanksgiving, a couple of times strong enough to wake me up from sleep. Yeah, I should have probably gone to the ER. Went to the doctor, who looked at my EKG, didn’t see any problem, sent me to a cardiologist who also didn’t see any problem, and now here I am, wondering what I should do next.
Next point - the chest pain was concurrent with a very bad gas attack, which I get fairly regularly. The gas attacks seem to come when I eat too much (too much is now a 9 inch pizza) and apparently one serving from the Thanksgiving usuals was way too much for me. Gas attacks also occur when I don’t eat enough. FML
Possibly related, I have an umbilical hernia. I haven’t had it corrected, because the doctor I went to told me that it would just come back if I didn’t lose weight.
Next point - I also get chest pain when I get out of breath climbing stairs or walking too fast.
Another point - I had a thymectomy (several many years ago) so I have the zipper even though my heart is fine. I’m wondering if the pain could be due to the breast bone scar?
So chest pain if I exercise, or chest pain if I have gas. But not a heart problem.
Should I just “push through the pain”? Or should I go back and talk to my PCP some more?
Another vote for back to the doc. There could be a GI-related cause, which is manifesting as chest pain. The fact that you’re getting gas is also a possible GI indicator.
As odd as it sounds, my first reaction is some sort of acid reflux/heartburn. I have had some issues like that the last 10-15 years. It doesn’t feel like a burning pain or a sharp pain; more like a steady aching pain across the front of my chest from say the middle of my ribs to 4 inches below the throat. It usually hits before/early in my sleep of climbing hills/stairs. I am not saying that is what you have but something in the GI area, as Sunny said, could be worth the investigation.
Reflux causes chest pain in lots of people. Get evaluated for GERD.
Pulmonary embolism? Produces shortness of breath and often chest pain. Your cardiologist should have run tests for that, but if they were convinced it’s reflux they may not have bothered.
Another vote for heartburn (or whichever version of heartburn/reflux/etc this is). That’s typically one of the first things on my list for pains in the chest, throat, upper back (yes) and hiccups.
My totally non-medical advice. Go run out and pick up some Pepto-Bismal and chug some of that. Gaviscon might even be better (I much prefer the liquid). You might also want to start on Prevacid (you can even double up on it, but expect some, er, GI issues within 12-24 hours).
My medical advice, call or email your doc and list your symptoms. I don’t know about your’s, but my GP is really good about dealing with ‘minor’ stuff over the phone or email. He’s fully aware that there’s no reason to waste $150 for what’s likely heartburn or (in unrelated cases) a cough due to a bug going around or anything else that he can just handle that way.
Of course, your mileage can, and will, vary. My last doc wouldn’t have done this. He would have forced it into two visits.
I’ve had similar things over the years, and put it down to heartburn/indigestion. One particularly bad pain in the night worried me enough for the GP to refer me to a heart specialist who, like you, found nothing wrong with my heart and thought it was a muscle spasm in the gullet, probably caused by gastric reflux. When it happened again, my GP put me on a protein pump inhibitor to reduce the production of stomach acid, and arranged tests to rule out ulcers and helicobacter, and eventually sent me for an endoscopy which revealed a small hiatus hernia (flabbiness in the valve connecting the oesophagus to the stomach) but no signs of anything more serious: and since the PPI drug appeared to be controlling things adequately, that continues as a prophylactic daily dose and I don’t have any trouble now. If things start bubbling up a bit, I just increase the dose for a few days.
So, yes, if over the counter indigestion remedies don’t deal with it, check with your GP.
IANAD, but speaking from personal experience, the pain is excruciating. I don’t think I could have typed up a post when I had it. I could only sit in one position without feeling like being in immediate danger of suffocating. Any deviation, like standing, laying or sitting in another position resulted in me barely being able to breathe for several hours afterwards.
Say “I have chest pains” in an ER and see how easy it is for you to leave.
This isn’t to make money; this is because they don’t want you To Fucking Die.
Selfish and oh-so inconvenient, I know…
To his/her credit, the OP is already doing that part. I think the goal now is to come up with some good questions for the PCP along the lines of “Could it be X and if not so why?”. Especially since it is having some impact on lifestyle/quality of life. You and I may disagree about this (I don’t know) but once you are in a sort of treatment or under the care of a doctor for a problem, constant trips to the ER may not be the best idea. At least IMHO it screws up the continuity of care and cause things to be missed. But having ideas or questions you can ask, even if generated in part by ideas from a broad spectrum, isn’t that bad of an idea.
Kopek, I get it. Good questions for PCP, fine. Internet in lieu of PCP has happened though, and it’d bother me of someone came, asked advice and then ended up dead.
Someone I knew well woke up one night with chest pains. After a while his wife noticed he wasn’t in bed and when she asked him through the bathroom door if he was alright (he was throwing up), he said he had chest pains, but didn’t want to wake her up.
Eventually, the EMTs got called… but he died that night.
Chest pains to me are a big red flag not to be played with, but yes, I see and respect your point.
For all those who suggested it, I do have GERD, for which I take Nexium daily. I am only not sure that this is GERD because the pain was so high (think top part of the breast bone, just under the clavicle) OTOH, this is what happened the last time I went to the Dr. for chest pain.
I am trying to see if there is something else I should get the Dr. to check on. He’ll pretty much check anything that I ask him to, but he won’t really look for more unusual problems. Unfortunately, I’m put together funny, so I’m prone to unusual problems.
I get where you’re coming from. Perhaps I should have specified that I got the results from the stress test last week and the cardiologist said that my heart is strong.
It’s also worth noting that this is the 3rd time that I’ve gotten medical care for chest pain - the first time, I called an ambulance (before I was married) and went to the hospital, and yes, you get seen very quickly with chest pain, especially if you have a pain in your left arm as well. Nothing found - “probably a kidney stone, that’s what usually wakes people up”
2nd time, I went to my doctor who happened to have a stress test person working there that day. Result? No problems with your heart.
Also speaking from personal experience, I had a pretty severe pulmonary embolism (they were shocked that I could stand) which was accompanied by no pain whatsoever for the first 4 days. Naturally, within 3 hours after they released me from the hospital, I was convulsing in agony and had to go back to the hospital.
