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Cheery Cardiovascular Disease Thread

Started by Blue Jam, May 16, 2019, 04:19:20 PM

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Blue Jam

Been having chest pains recently. Very fleeting ones, and very superficial, so they feel more muscular than anything, but this has been worrying me as A. My dad had treatment for DVT then died of a sudden massive heart attack when he was 45, and B. I am 37 and very worried about being DEAD SOON. My GP has advised me to go and get regular tests just in case the cause was genetic and not just because my dad was very sedentary and smoked a bajillion Golden Virginia rollups a day, and also because of my age.

Just had my pulse, oxygen saturation and blood pressure measured, and then had an ECG. The verdict is "stop worrying, you soft twat" as everything is normal, but I was also urged to get all this done so there would at least be some baseline measurements on my medical record and doctors will know precisely how fucked I am if anything changes.

I've also been worried because I've been rewatching Mortimer And Whitehouse Go Fishing and all this talk of stents has made me think I'd rather have a doctor find a problem and nip it in the bud than be a real man and hope it goes away and then collapse one day and never come round again.

Anyone else worried about their dicky ticker, or if their intercostal muscles are just being cunts and playing a sick joke on them?

Mr_Simnock

The pains could be caused by anxiety. What is your cholestrol like? If your cholestrol levels are fine too then I wouldn't worry about it too much. So far all the things they can test have shown that you are OK, worse thing you can do is get parranoid about it, I did years ago, absolute rot of a thing to worry about.

Twed

I do worry that it will get bad. My dad had a heart attack in his 50s. So now I exercise and eat carefully.

I have had chest pain a lot, but like you it is more muscular than anything else. It's more of a sternum-related thing, which doctors would probably call costochondritis (anxiety or inflammation being the most likely cause of flare-ups for me). Also acid reflux is a pretty common cause of chest pain. Get yourself on a daily Omeprazole.

Buelligan

My dad was a thoroughly awful violent horrible cunt.  When I was about thirteen he had a massive heart attack.  On the day, the only day, that his old friend, a fairly highly regarded heart surgeon was visiting from another continent.  He had his bag of shit with him too.  And my dad survived and lived on for a fair few undeserved years.

But don't rely on chance, get checked and change your habits (if they need changing).  And don't worry, we are all going to die without any effort at all.  Put the effort into living well. 

I hug your worried arse.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Mr_Simnock on May 16, 2019, 04:26:43 PM
The pains could be caused by anxiety. What is your cholestrol like? If your cholestrol levels are fine too then I wouldn't worry about it too much

I was at the GP for a follow-up appointment as I'm back on the Prozac, more for (work-related) stress than depression but it's a bit of both. I'd been meaning to have a heart health check-up for a while but only just found the bottle to ask for one.

Getting my cholesterol tested again in a couple of weeks (my GP wanted to look at the ECG results first) but every time I've had it tested before it's been normal, despite my fondness for chocolate and cheese.

I had a D-dimer test for DVT last year after having a weird pain in my calf. That came back negative... and then I got the news that an old flatmate of mine had just died of a pulmonary embolism after an apparently symptomless DVT, just shy of his 40th birthday...

I can't decide if I'm being a complete hypochondriac or just sensible, given all of this. Honestly, the prospect of cardiovascular disease scares me much more than cancer.

It also doesn't help that I work as a vascular dementia researcher, and am therefore a terrible patient...

Buelligan

Quote from: Blue Jam on May 16, 2019, 04:37:06 PM
I can't decide if I'm being a complete hypochondriac or just sensible, given all of this.

I think it's a bit of both.  I think you've also reached an age where you're beginning to see the first few golden leaves and the wind is noticeably chillier.  And that's frightening. 

Don't be frightened, prepare.  Work to make sure you're the fittest, strongest person you can be and stop fucking worrying, I know you can't right now but you will.  You'll make your peace with it eventually, so waste as little of your precious time on it as you can until you get there.

a duncandisorderly

I'm seeing the doc again tomorrow who referred me, but I've already had the letter back from the cardiologist.... I had shortness of breath & some intermittent chest pains. a mate of mine (similar lifestyle, though I gave up smoking years ago while he only quit when told to last year) just had a quad bypass. his brother has a stent. so, not unreasonably, given all that + my age & occupation, & the self-destructive years of abuse before I met the mrs, I was worried....

I had ecg. echo-cardiogram (ultrasound). chest x-ray. MRI. CT. loads of blood tests. over £3000 of tests (which the insurance company paid all but £100 of).

nothing. in fact, the cardiologist said that given my slightly elevated cholesterol levels (which have been the same for twenty years) & what I told him of my murky (six pints a night + fags + weed + coke) past, he was astonished that my plumbing was completely clear & my heart function was within spec.

in the written down version of this, which I will discuss with the doc tomorrow, the cardiologist says that on one of the scans, he could see evidence of a hiatus hernia. I've had episodes of reflux since I don't know when, but probably from the first time I turned myself inside out after a binge of some sort. anyway, upon reading up a bit on the condition, the symptoms all match.

so.

it might just be that.

fwiw, my dad was a heavy smoker (capstans & rollies) & liked a few pints, & he died suddenly at the ripe old age of 42, when I was 16. massive stroke, which then (1980) was bigger of a deal than it seems to be now, in terms of its capacity to finish someone off.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Buelligan on May 16, 2019, 04:43:06 PMDon't be frightened, prepare.  Work to make sure you're the fittest, strongest person you can be and stop fucking worrying, I know you can't right now but you will.  You'll make your peace with it eventually, so waste as little of your precious time on it as you can until you get there.

Cheers, but a friend's mother recently had a massive stroke leading to severe brain damage at 52, after decades of being a fitness fanatic and avoiding saturated fat, booze, fags and everything else you're supposed to avoid if you don't want a stroke. She now uses a wheelchair and lives in a care home where her neighbours are all about 20 years older than her... stuff like that makes me wonder why anyone bothers, especially when Donald Trump and the Queen seem to be doing just fine on their cheeseburger and dubonnet breakfasts.

Blue Jam

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on May 16, 2019, 05:05:33 PMmassive stroke, which then (1980) was bigger of a deal than it seems to be now, in terms of its capacity to finish someone off.

Why is that, I wonder? It seems that people dying young of massive heart attacks and strokes used to be really common, and now it seems rare, or people seem to recover more often.

Congrats on the clean pipes, and good luck for tomorrow.

poo


BlodwynPig

Quote from: Blue Jam on May 16, 2019, 04:19:20 PM
Been having chest pains recently. Very fleeting ones, and very superficial, so they feel more muscular than anything, but this has been worrying me as A. My dad had treatment for DVT then died of a sudden massive heart attack when he was 45, and B. I am 37 and very worried about being DEAD SOON. My GP has advised me to go and get regular tests just in case the cause was genetic and not just because my dad was very sedentary and smoked a bajillion Golden Virginia rollups a day, and also because of my age.

Just had my pulse, oxygen saturation and blood pressure measured, and then had an ECG. The verdict is "stop worrying, you soft twat" as everything is normal, but I was also urged to get all this done so there would at least be some baseline measurements on my medical record and doctors will know precisely how fucked I am if anything changes.

I've also been worried because I've been rewatching Mortimer And Whitehouse Go Fishing and all this talk of stents has made me think I'd rather have a doctor find a problem and nip it in the bud than be a real man and hope it goes away and then collapse one day and never come round again.

Anyone else worried about their dicky ticker, or if their intercostal muscles are just being cunts and playing a sick joke on them?

Yeh, i was in ER recently for similar reasons and tentatively given all clear. Best of luck.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Mr_Simnock on May 16, 2019, 04:26:43 PM
The pains could be caused by anxiety. What is your cholestrol like? If your cholestrol levels are fine too then I wouldn't worry about it too much. So far all the things they can test have shown that you are OK, worse thing you can do is get parranoid about it, I did years ago, absolute rot of a thing to worry about.

Yes, subliminal anxiety my landlady told me. She'd had similar symptoms years ago.


a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Blue Jam on May 16, 2019, 05:21:57 PM
Cheers, but a friend's mother recently had a massive stroke leading to severe brain damage at 52....

my guitarist had an aneurysm at that age, almost killed him. he was at a holiday apartment at the british end of mallorca, & the attending paramedics apparently took some convincing that he wasn't just drunk.
luckily, there's an absolutely colossal university-hospital with a lot of very good specialists on that island, & his time in intensive care (ten days) did a lot of good.
when I went to see him there, he didn't know who I was.


at the time, we assumed it had been brought on by stress (he was very high up in one of the UK's bigger financial institutions- takeovers, mergers, that sort of caper... being interviewed by the FT while we were backstage at a gig in finland...), but it later emerged that the thing had been sat inside his head his whole life, just waiting to let go. genetically predisposed, & I'm pleased to relate not only that those were the words he used himself, but that he's playing guitar almost as well as before. but it was touch-&-go. he's taken early retirement, & won't drive, something he once loved for its own sake.

BlodwynPig


Endicott

A fair few of the men on my dad's side of the family died from heart failure in either in their late 40s, or 50s, but not my dad who lasted until mid 70s before his ticker exploded. And it his case it was probably already overly exercised trying to deal with bladder cancer. He did live an incredible clean life though, no booze or fags, unlike me.

Anyway my GP said that with him going at that age there is no statistical reason for me to be worried (or more worried than normal anyway), and that the other family members don't count to the stats either. My only ongoing issue is high blood pressure which I control with tablets and weight loss, and a yearly check up blood test to make sure it's all going ok.

I'm 55. I reckon when you're gonna go, you're gonna go, so I don't think about it. Although I have given up Wotsits.

royce coolidge

I had similar about 6-7 years ago,in bed trying to sleep,sharp pains and ache in chest and left arm,a real feeling of fading away.
Absolutely sure this was a heart attack and this was the end,called an ambulance for the first time in my life,paramedics run a few tests,ecg ,oxygen sats and other things.
They tell me that it is most likely an anxiety attack as my readings are fine.
Anxiety attack! I was most apologetic for calling them out,what a twat I felt,thought I was too hard headed for all that malarkey,well I knew better now.
Still get them 4-5 times a week nearly always in bed,relaxed(!),so it may be similar for you Blue Jam but definitely best to get checked out,hope it goes ok for you.

Twed

Quote from: royce coolidge on May 16, 2019, 06:57:17 PM
I had similar about 6-7 years ago,in bed trying to sleep,sharp pains and ache in chest and left arm,a real feeling of fading away.
Absolutely sure this was a heart attack and this was the end,called an ambulance for the first time in my life,paramedics run a few tests,ecg ,oxygen sats and other things.
They tell me that it is most likely an anxiety attack
It was actually a big fart you'd been storing up. They just tell you it's anxiety to save embarrassment.

Buelligan

Quote from: Blue Jam on May 16, 2019, 05:21:57 PM
Cheers, but a friend's mother recently had a massive stroke leading to severe brain damage at 52, after decades of being a fitness fanatic and avoiding saturated fat, booze, fags and everything else you're supposed to avoid if you don't want a stroke. She now uses a wheelchair and lives in a care home where her neighbours are all about 20 years older than her... stuff like that makes me wonder why anyone bothers, especially when Donald Trump and the Queen seem to be doing just fine on their cheeseburger and dubonnet breakfasts.

Yeah.  My mum died young of lung cancer having never smoked.  Sometimes it just goes like that but not taking care of yourself means the chance of bad shit occurring is greater, I think that's fairly well established.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Blue Jam on May 16, 2019, 05:21:57 PM
Cheers, but a friend's mother recently had a massive stroke leading to severe brain damage at 52, after decades of being a fitness fanatic and avoiding saturated fat, booze, fags and everything else you're supposed to avoid if you don't want a stroke. She now uses a wheelchair and lives in a care home where her neighbours are all about 20 years older than her... stuff like that makes me wonder why anyone bothers, especially when Donald Trump and the Queen seem to be doing just fine on their cheeseburger and dubonnet breakfasts.

My gran died recently after decades of virtuous if not hessian-weave living. Forty years of ryvita lunches to still die of cancer? I think the people who can live such straitened lives are made of different stuff to me, cos I'd have to be guaranteed a long and healthy twilight to convince me to forever forgo the worldly pleasures of the occasional drink, or cigarette, or larded haggis. You can sleep when you're dead, but you can't blot out the grave with a nice spliff.

Buelligan

She's your gran, of course she's going to die.  It's what they all do.  Wankers.

Sorry about your gran though, no age.

Avril Lavigne

I've had ongoing heart-area & left arm aches for the past several months but tbh I've had enough of being alive anyway.

Buelligan

I might be wrong but I believe symptoms of possible heart attack are different for men and women.

Mr_Simnock

Quote from: Blue Jam on May 16, 2019, 05:21:57 PM
Cheers, but a friend's mother recently had a massive stroke leading to severe brain damage at 52, after decades of being a fitness fanatic and avoiding saturated fat, booze, fags and everything else you're supposed to avoid if you don't want a stroke. She now uses a wheelchair and lives in a care home where her neighbours are all about 20 years older than her... stuff like that makes me wonder why anyone bothers, especially when Donald Trump and the Queen seem to be doing just fine on their cheeseburger and dubonnet breakfasts.

This person sounds at the very least like an outlier in the grand scheme of things, as buells said still look after yourself as you greatly lower the chances of getting anything truly horrid in later life. Some people are just genetically prone to things like that and she could well have had symptoms for a while that were just ignored too.

Quote from: Blue Jam on May 16, 2019, 05:24:48 PM
Why is that, I wonder? It seems that people dying young of massive heart attacks and strokes used to be really common, and now it seems rare, or people seem to recover more often.

Congrats on the clean pipes, and good luck for tomorrow.

I'm not sure how true this is though (it being young people rather than just 18+). We do know that death from cardiovascular disease is dropping and has been now for many years but that can from all kinds of reasons. Smoking rates for one have dropped massively since the 1950's and I always think that's one of the main causes plus more people get checked out by their GP too and treatments are much better know for all sorts of health problems.

Zetetic

Mmm. Significant reduction in population risk factors (and prophylaxis with anticoagulants), and we're better at rapidly identifying possible strokes and thrombolysing. (Well, unless you live in the middle of nowhere. Or have the stroke during your sleep. That sort of thing.)

Kelvin

Found out my mum had a heart attack last night. The first she's had. She's awake and doing okay in hospital, but it's a sobering slap to the face. I don't even know what I'm trying to say with this post, really. It's just a shit thing that's happened.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Buelligan on May 16, 2019, 10:14:38 PM
She's your gran, of course she's going to die.  It's what they all do.  Wankers.

Sorry about your gran though, no age.

She wasn't a blood relative, and was my first close relative to die - the closest before her had been people like my parents' aunts and uncles. We were close in steps removedness, but not in personal terms so I wasn't upset when she died of the cancer. In fact, that might have been the first non-wanker thing she ever did.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Kelvin on May 16, 2019, 11:15:55 PM
Found out my mum had a heart attack last night. The first she's had. She's awake and doing okay in hospital, but it's a sobering slap to the face. I don't even know what I'm trying to say with this post, really. It's just a shit thing that's happened.

Don't say anything, just know that we feel the shitness for you and your mum. Chin up, hugs, get wells, god or gods, all of that.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: royce coolidge on May 16, 2019, 06:57:17 PM
I had similar about 6-7 years ago,in bed trying to sleep,sharp pains and ache in chest and left arm,a real feeling of fading away.
Absolutely sure this was a heart attack and this was the end,called an ambulance for the first time in my life,paramedics run a few tests,ecg ,oxygen sats and other things.
They tell me that it is most likely an anxiety attack as my readings are fine.
Anxiety attack! I was most apologetic for calling them out,what a twat I felt,thought I was too hard headed for all that malarkey,well I knew better now.
Still get them 4-5 times a week nearly always in bed,relaxed(!),so it may be similar for you Blue Jam but definitely best to get checked out,hope it goes ok for you.

45 dollars for an ambulance here. But I'm glad I got one even if it was just anxiety.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Buelligan on May 16, 2019, 10:26:40 PM
I might be wrong but I believe symptoms of possible heart attack are different for men and women.

Yeh, that's just the menopause poor old Avril is suffering from. Or childbirth.