Armyvet&wife,
This is my first post although I have been reading this forum for the past month or so since being diagnosed with heart disease. It's a long story and I will share more details later. However, I am writing to let you know that I understand how you feel, because for a while I thought I was going crazy because the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I kept thinking, am I making up all these symptoms? However, my instincts told me that I wasn't, since I have never been a sickly person. Some of my symptoms included fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pains and anxiety.
It turns out that I have a hole in my heart that is creating all sorts of complications. But it took an ER doctor, 3 cardiologists, 2 neurologists, one pulmonologist and countless tests to finally figure out what was wrong with me and what to do about it.
I guess what I am trying to get at is that, even if you already suffer from depression and panic attacks, you could still have a heart condition that is exacerbating these conditions. I strongly suggest you go see a cardiologist and have them run some serious tests, not the simple EKG's they normally do while you are at rest. I have had about 6 of those done in the past year and they all come back normal, even though I have a hole in my heart that is causing large amounts of blood to be traveling back and forth between the right and left sides of my heart!!! I am also a runner, so I think for me an EKG at rest is a worthless test.
There are echocardiograms, echo. with bubble study, transcranial dopplers and the gold standard for detecting all sorts of heart defects without being too invasive, the TEE or Transesophageal Echocardiogram which can and should be done on you to rule out any possible heart conditions. Be persistent - there are a lot of doctors out there who don't believe you are sick and are quick to brush you off. I am 40 but lucky enough to look younger, I run so I keep in shape and I have a clean medical history since I rarely get sick. Needless to say, most of these doctors were having a hard time believing that there was anything wrong with me. But, I persisted and I prevailed and I hope you can do the same.
I wish you the best of luck. Keep us posted. I will share more details on my condition in a future e-mail. My MAIN heart condition is a PFO (hole in heart) with an ASA (atrial septal aneurysm), and these have caused many other complications. I wanted to let you know this because most of my future postings will probably be in one of the PFO forums.
Take care,