I'm a 52-year-old female, athletic, though maybe 20 pounds overweight, and my cholesterol medicine was recently doubled to 40mg Pravastatin. This is the only medicine I take. I don't smoke or drink. I eat and sleep well-- maybe a little too well. There is no heart disease on either side of the family.
I have pneumonia, and the doctor threw Levaquin at it [Levofloxacin]. The 3rd dose of 10 left me with shortness- of- breath. The evening before, I'd passed out returning from the bathroom; I've no idea how long I laid there. I was advised to go to the E.R., where an EKG indicated flat T-Waves. I was admitted to telemetry in the Cardiac wing for 2 days. I neglected to report the right-side chest pain, because it wasn't over my heart. The diagnosis is: cardiogenic syncope with irregular EKGs. I had several more EKGS, a Carotid Sonogram, a Chest Sonogram, and I'm due to have an outpatient stress test on the treadmill when I finish the course of Amoxicillin I'm currently taking. The prescribing doctor thinks I should blow off Cardiology. What do you think? I'd like to return to my unstressful job as gardener at the local college. Though I love my job, it doesn't pay very well, nor do I have health insurance. These tests are astronomically expensive. Do I really need to go to the next step? a stress test? then possibly a heart cath?