Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Last Tuesday I went to the doctor's with a dry, hacking cough I'd had for a couple of weeks and get every so often. They started to chase a diagnosis of asthma. I did peak flow readings, but they were all super high, suggesting no asthma; plus Ventolin didn't help at all. Over the weekend, I started getting breathless with a 100+ bpm heart when doing anything physical at all - even walking up stairs. I'm also fatigued and achey all the time and I still have the cough.
At a doctor's appointment today, she was a hair's breadth away from sending me to hospital for observation for the breathlessness and high heart rate I am suffering from, following an ECG (which was clear) and Pulseox test she didn't like the look of. As it was, I got a strong dose of antibiotics in case it's a bacterial infection, and I have to go back for more tests tomorrow. If I disappear, I'm in hospital. Next most likely diagnosis is a viral infection; then obscure-ish variants of pneumonia etc, and some way out on the probability curve after that is a blood clot on the lung. I'm statistically at a very low risk of that, but I'm a bit alert to the possibility because of recent events.
So, umm, yeah.
Have you improved at all, Rich? Believe it or not (I didn't post about it on here in case it heightened my worry with people throwing suggestions at me and stuff), but around my birthday in December, I had EXACTLY, EXACTLY the same symptoms. Went to A&E and everything was "fine" - they did all of the tests on me that they did on you it seems (ECG, etc). It turns out (after a couple of weeks of this shit), that I had a bacterial respiratory infection which was making me a tad breathless, but anxiety was causing this to snowball and the more worrying symptoms. I'd basically worked myself into a state where I was convinced I was having a heart attack/lung cancer/doom. I was working myself into full-on anxiety attack mode
sub-consciously (for various reasons - well, reasons I suspect were the reasons - which I won't go into), then I'd realise when the symptoms came on, and I'd
consciously work myself up even more with the doom-thoughts.
It was absolutely awful. I was up all night a few times genuinely worried that if I fell asleep, I'd be dead by morning. I'm okay now pretty much. I hope in your case, it's the same deal.