This will be a long post, I appreciate any and all advice or opinions, God bless everyone on here struggling with something heart related, starting at the beginning. I was born healthy to a 43 year old type one diabetic mother who had been diabetic since she was 9. Besides a very small VSD (heart murmur) I grew up healthy, a little over weight (20-30lbs) for my BMI group but very healthy, played varsity sports and everything. (football,lax,baseball). in 2019 I was sitting in class when I started getting hot, having chest pain, and feeling unwell, decided to leave school and drive myself to ER where they found my troponin was elevated at 0.02 (this is borderline but still odd for 20 year old) they did a echocardiogram in the ER which found nothing abnormal and they let me go. From then on i would get periodic chest pain on my left side, a dull ache that would come and go as it pleased but was not related to exercise which is a good thing. I should mention my history of drug abuse, since 2014 I have been a chronic weed smoker, my group of buddies in school were known as the cool stoners lol. I never did the hard scary drugs though, besides a few chill Psychedelic trips here and there those were the hardest drugs I ever did. And I will mention that when I did those drugs and had those experiences I was Symptom free, surrounded by my friends and had wonderful experiences. I also quit all those drugs besides weed before my heart issues started up. In august 2020, a year or or so after my elevated troponin levels (2019) I was smoking weed and was taking bong rips like usual when 5 min after my rip I got the worst chest pain in my life. This was not my usual dull ache chest pain, this felt like someone was stabbing me to the left of my breastbone. It was a crushing pain that spread to the back of both arms as well, it felt like maple syrup was going down the veins of my arms and it felt like my veins were gonna burst. it made my heart beat and pound like a drum, i instantly felt the worst feeling of doom in my life. for three hours it continued like this(the average time for a weed high), i would splash water on my face and stand in my cold shower which would help calm me a little. all these symptoms went away after three hours and I chalked it up to a bad weed trip, I now know that not going to the hospital while I had this episode was the worst decision of my life. Since then my life is hell. I get palpitations all the time, chest pain on left side everyday (dull, but also sharp for a few seconds) my heart beats 120BPM just when I stand up. I cant exercise, cant have sex either (heart rate goes to 170-200 during sex) I get dizzy and lightheaded all the time. sometimes I can barely shop at the store because my symptoms are so bad, i feel like im dying. My only relief is when i lay flat on my back or when im sleeping. my heart rate when i sleep is like 50-60bpm, but as soon as I stand it jumps to 100+. because of this my dumb community clinic cardiologist has diagnosed me with POTS(postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) which i disagree with. I tell him all my symptoms he just says I have bad anxiety, I wanna strangle the old fart. I would if could but I haven’t even met the guy (thanks COVID!) oh and btw i tested NEGATIVE for covid so if you have read this far don’t tell me thats my problem. All jokes aside my old fart of a cardiologist has ordered me lots of tests he's not such a bad guy lol. ive had two stress tests, my most recent in November of 2020 (after my bad episode) which came back negative. ive also had two regular cardiac echos in jan 2021 and march 2021, besides my heart murmur they all came back with no abnormalities. on june 1st I had a cardiac MRI which came back with the following abnormality. "Mildly decreased left and right ventricular systolic functions with ejection fractions of 48% and 46%, respectively" They also used contrast on me which is great for looking at scar tissue and the MRI found none so that kinda proves that my bad weed reaction episode was not a heart attack, maybe. My doc says to ignore the abnormalities on the MRI but im scared and just cant. I really hate heart disease, its so frustrating to have all the symptoms and be really struggling with life feeling like one foot is in the grave and the doctors just keep throwing up their hands and saying "idk kid". at this point I would take a bad news diagnoses over nothing cause I could at least get some treatment for it. they do wanna put my on beta blockers and i tried them for a day and they made my symptoms go down, but i stopped because i wanna know the root cause and get back to a normal life again, if thats even possible. and if its not I just wanna know so i can either get busy living or get busy dying. I hate this in between crap of not knowing. if you have read this far GOD BLESS YOU! and once again any advice is much appreciated!!!!!
