On May 18th of this year, while at work I felt a burning chest, pain in my left arm and a feeling that I was about to pass out. Like many people I thought I was having a heart attack. I drove myself to the hospital ER. I spent 3 days there, during that time they checked my heart via ultra sound and stress test and they found that my heart was normal.Then I was the told that I had acid reflux. I was put on protonix and sent home. Since that time it's been a uphill battle to feel normal again.
After my hospital stay I went through 2 more bad attacks of acid reflux. It was found that evey time I started my blood pressure medicine (Uniretic), by mid-day I had bad acid reflux. These attacks were so bad that it damaged my esophigus.
I had an upper GI which was normal. I then had a endoscopy that showed gastritis, inodentis, hiatal hernia and esophagitis. By this time I had switched the protonix to nexium because of what I thought was nasty side affects. The doctor also started me on carafate 4 times a day and bumped up the nexium to 2 times a day. Now for the good stuff...
Since I started the medications, I've been to the ER 2 times. One night I woke up around 3 and felt like I couldn't move. When I did move it felt like a burning sensation traveling through my body. I never had felt this before, so I went to the hospital were they figured it was an anxiety attack because they couldn't find anything wrong. I also was checked by a nurologist which came to the same diagnosis. My doctor added Zoloft for the anxiety which did nothing at all. Last Friday I went back to the ER out of fustration. Hoping that they could find out what's going wrong with my body. I found that going to the ER is a waste of time unless you have a heart problem or broken bones. Up until a week ago this anxiety stayed with me in the form of what felt like an a dull electric current flowing through my body. While I've been going through all this, I still travel 50 miles (one way) to work, at work I feel horrible. Even though my anxiety attacks have stopped, I still suffer from general weakness, chest pain (by movement) dizzyness, arm, back and neck aches and pains not to mention a constant fuzzy head feeling that I just can't seem to get rid of. Lets just say that in the last 2 months I havn't even been close to feeling normal! I've also lost 30 lbs since this all started, I dropped all use of caffine products, eat smaller portions and stay away from the foods that make it worse. I'm doing everything the doctors are telling me to do and I still have no relief.
So my question is... How long until I feel normal again? And is there anything I can do or take to get rid of these nasty side effects?
Ridgerunner