u/Existing-Committee74

Every few days this thing happens where I get awful heart palpitations, I start to feel my brain throbbing along with my pulse, I get incredibly lightheaded and dizzy, my chest feels tight and I feel out of breath like I’m having an asthma attack but my inhaler does nothing. My skin starts tingling and I feel hot and cold at the same time.

It’s not anxiety. I have anxiety attacks sometimes and I’ve had the silent attacks, but I know what those feel like, and this is different. And nothing seems to trigger what ever this is. I’m just lying in bed watching tv and it just happens.

I asked my PCP to send me to a cardiologist but as usual he completely dismissed me. And before anyone says it, I’ve tried the whole “note in my chart that you’ve said no” thing, it doesn’t work with him. I called my insurance company trying to switch doctors but I’m on state funded insurance and they assign my doctor, and they wouldn’t let me switch.

I’ve had a lot of EKGs at the ER over the years and they’ve noted both a T-wave abnormality and more recently ST depression on every single one (the most recent one the ER doc made a note to “consider myocardial ischemia”) but they keep trying to tell me it doesn’t mean anything and I must’ve just been stressed when they did the test.

I have GERD, I’m always nauseous, I get out of breath just walking to my kitchen, my chest constantly hurts. I think there’s something seriously wrong with me, I’m getting scared. No one will listen to me. What am I supposed to do?

Edit to add data: I’m a 25 yo female with a BMI of 20.9, I don’t drink, I’ve never smoked, I eat a lot of sugar but I’m dairy free and eat very little red meat, my father died of a heart attack four years ago.

I have endo on my bowel, along with hEDS, EOE, IBS, GERD, MCAS, and POTS. So to say my diet impacts my health would be a gross understatement. Every doctor I talk to, every Reddit post I read, every article, literally everyone just keeps saying “cut out carbs, limit sugar, don’t eat dairy or gluten, ooh you shouldn’t have red meat, don’t eat processed foods, eat all these vitamins, eat so much salt you drown in it, eat all this fiber but not too much!”

I live in a very small rural area. The closest movie theater to me is over 20 miles away. I drive thirty minutes to all of my doctors appointments. Our airport is smaller than our Walmart. There’s no gluten free, low fodmap, dairy free foods in our grocery stores. The produce is all processed garbage and the salads have all turned brown in the fridges and Lactaid is the closest to a vegan milk you’re gonna find.

Not to mention that even if I could find actual good, healthy foods products, I live my life in a constant state of pure agony and fatigue. Most days I only leave my bed four or five times to use the bathroom and feed my dog and that’s all the activity I can tolerate because I’m so fucking exhausted. I couldn’t cook a meal if you held a gun to my head.

Microwave dinners and snack foods are the only things keeping me alive. So unless someone plans on starting a brand of microwave dinners that are dairy free and gluten free and trans fat free and sugar free and whatever the fuck else my GI doctor is gonna yell at me for eating, and then someone manages to convince my population of 40k town to stock that shit, then I’m just gonna have to keep eating raisin brain and lean cuisine until the universe takes pity on me and hits me with a bus or something.