Hello guys I want to tell you my story. A never ending nightmare for me.
It all started when I was 11 years old. I was pretty sick (bad virus), staying home and I remember playing GTA San Andreas ( cmon everyone played GTA when they were 11 right?) in the living room when I felt some weird feeling in my chest. I thought it was my heart so I told my parents that I could feel my heart rate. They reacted… well let’s say THEY FREKING PANICKED. My father has high blood pressure, asthma and he is a total hypochondriac so he rushed to his room and gave me his blood pressure monitor to see how high my pulse was. My whole family gathered around me and just looked at me as if I was dying while my pulse was being measured. At this point I am now sure that I was having the worst panic attack in my life but then I was just a silly kid who judged the situation from my parents reaction. 157 heart rate. I still remember when it was finally over and I felt some kind of relief. It wasn’t 200 right? But no. My dad immediately called my GP and I was rushed to a kid’s cardiologist. I was f*cking petrified. I had couple of EKGs taken, the doctor tried many weird ways to bring my pulse down but I don’t think it was even possible as I was thinking that I’m dying. EKGs were all fine except the madly high pulse of course so she just prescribed me betablockers.
From this day on I lived in a nightmare. My parents were obsessed with my pulse, non stop measuring it and I already had a phobia about it. Couple more visits to the same cardiologist pulse was still pretty high no matter how calm I tried to be ( around 120-130 I remember) so my father decided to send me to A HOSPITAL FOR A WEEK TO MONITOR ME 24HOURS A DAY. HELL NO. After many fights with my family I just stopped sharing with them how I felt. I wasn’t sent to a hospital. I just lived this nightmare alone.
Two years later I had some blood tests done for my thyroid glands and found out that I had hyperthyroidism. Went to a specialist and she told me that it was probably triggered from stress. Hmm I wonder what stress. I was put on medication and the days went by.
I could say I learned to live with my fear of fast heart rate and I pretty much forgot to check it so frequently until one day during summer I just decided to check how it was. Well, it wasn’t what I expected so boom- another series of fear and panic. I remember that I couldn’t sleep that night, I felt so doomed. As this was in the beginning of summer, I spent my whole summer break worrying about my heart. It was filled with so many panic episodes that I don’t even want to remember. I still didn’t know about anxiety and panic disorders so I was trying to figure out why my heart is beating so fast and I always failed.
I started 8th grade, new school, new friends and I forgot to think about it for a long time. I got into a really bad depression around 9th grade and I didn’t really care about my health anymore. I was drinking and smoking on a regular basis in 10th and 11th grade. Well, of course there were some episodes of panic between the time but let’s skip to 2017. I was 17, had a nice girlfriend, cool friends, worked out regularly and I was pretty much happy. Living the teenager life I guess. Untill I was just laying and reading a book and decided to check my pulse. BIG FCKING MISTAKE. I became obsessed again and this time it is worse than ever. I stopped working out in fear of my heart beating so fast I would die, I stopped socializing and going out this much, I could not lay down and nap, I found falling asleep much harder. I am now checking my pulse all the time. I am not even measuring it because I am too afraid to know how high it really is. I am just feeling the beat. I don’t know what to do it is 2018 already and I have spent my last 7 months obsessing over my heart. I feel like I am not the same person I was before. I cant bring myself to stop. I know it is all in my head, I had countless EKGs done, blood tests even had a holter, nothing wrong just the high pulse. I still take my betablockers I think that I can’t live without them. I feel so doomed. The fist thing I do in the morning is to check my pulse, I probably do it around 40-50 times a day I don’t know. I want to stop but I can’t. Is anyone in a similar situation? I feel so hopeless and I need help.