r/pericarditis

Hey guys, currently having a flare up and found this sub.

Just gonna drop my life story.

15 years old: Heart attack during gym class in 9th grade. Discovered congenital rca defect. Gets heart surgery. Surgery successful but gets SVT and severe pericarditis side effects.

16 years old: Pericarditis every month. More surgery to drain liquid. Doctors accuse my mom of making up my symptoms. CPS is called, im placed in foster care. Have another flare up and almost die in foster care. Mom sent to jail for refusing to do a court ordered mental health eval.

17 years old: Suicidal and obese from prednisone/debilitating perciarditis. Random old guy inspires me to do the paleo diet to reduce inflammation.

18 years old: been paleo for 1 year, lost weight, able to control pericarditis with just ibuprofen. I swear off cardiologist and doctors cause they cant do anything and prednisone is awful.

19-22 years old: Meet a girl, get married, live happily ever after. Still get flare ups 2-4x a year but its self managed with ibuprofen and rest.

29 years old: Havent seen a doctor in like 12 years. Whenever i flare up, I get scared that my chronic pericarditis will lead to restrictive one day. I dont take my life for granted.

I really want to know what everyone else's story is. How did you get pericarditis?

This has always felt like my burden to carry and knowing there's a whole ass sub for this is insane

Thanks!!

I’ve been on Arcalyst for 3 months, due to recurring pericarditis caused by some sort of viral situation creating an effusion. Fortunately the effusion continues to shrink and my l’m overall feeling great.

My challenge is I’m trying to work back into exercising and it seems whenever my heart rate gets up for a period of time, some pressure comes back and I need to take ibuprofen for a few days for the discomfort, which eventually goes away.

Is this a pericarditis flare? When they eventually going away, allowing me to get back to exercising?

24 M recently diagnosed with pericarditis

On ibuprofen and cholchicine but taking DGL and l glutamine to support gut health due to the ibuprofen.

I don’t experience any of the usual symptoms of pericarditis. The doctor said it’s acute.

The last 3 days my anxiety was out the roof.

Has anyone had this and successfully made it out? Am I making it a big deal? Can you heal and recover?

I wonder if it’s a normal thing on this medication

Hello,

I am a distance runner who was diagnosed with pericarditis ~3 weeks ago. My CRP then was over 60 and my EKG had mild effusion.

I’ve been taking 1,800 mg ibuprofen daily, plus colchicine 0.6mg 2x/day.

Now, CRP is <3 and EKG looks normal. My doctor said I should stop taking all meds but still not exercise for 3 months. I can’t help but think this defies guidelines. Thoughts?

So I started have back and shoulder pain that eventually moved to chest pain, it wasn’t unbearable but it was definitely there. I attributed it to my job since I have a lot of shoulder pain with it but when it moved to my chest I got concerned and went to a cardiologist. Pain did keep me up at night for the first couple of weeks and heart rate was spiking anytime I got out of bed to like 130 or more. EKG and labs were normal but I have a small pericardial effusion. Doctor decided not to treat for peri? I’m at week 3 of this, most pain is gone and im still have some heart rate spikes but they are getting better. I’m just taking ibprophen. What do you guys think?