Hello everyone,
First of all I'm sorry about my poor English, but it's not my native language and I don't exercise it very much, so I will try my best to explain what I feel.
I'm male, 39 years old, 193cm, about 98Kg, I don't drink, don't smoke, My BP is around 115 / 75, total cholesterol 175, HDL 44. I have a relatively sedentary lifestyle because I work in a sitting position for many hours every day, but I try to walk at least 40 mins every 2-3 days and I try to eat the best I can. I don't have any serious health issue, the only thing I have is a Hiatus Hernia which makes me take Pantoprazole 20mg once in a while.
Ok, so far you might think I'm a healthy person, which can even be true in general terms, but I started having panic attacks for the first time about 15 years ago, and I've had lots of them for a period of six months maybe. Then I got "cured" of my panic issues and started feeling PVCs. At the time I didn't connect the PVCs to the previous panic episodes, but now I think they were related.
During the past 15 years I didn't have any panic episode, but I've always had PVCs in "cycles". Sometimes I don't feel them for 6 months or so, then I feel again, then they go away again, etc etc. When I feel them, they're about 10-20 in a hour or something like that.
But since August I've had two STRONG panic attacks, for the first time in my life I was pretty sure I was going to die. My heart rate went to 180 or something like that, and the PVCs during the fast heart rate just made me to worry even more. I ended up in hospital twice, and after that I had echocardiography, ECG with stress test and they found nothing wrong except only 1 PAC during the stress test (8 minutes test). I showed the results to my cardiologist and he said I'm perfectly fine and I'm simply too anxious, which is true. He told me to keep taking (I was already doing it) 10mg of Diazepam (5 on breakfast + 5 on lunch) for some time until I feel calm, and told me to walk, even more if possible.
Alright, I was relatively calm for some time and I even managed to control my panic attacks, I've read a lot about them and I found some weird way to stop them: when I start panicking, if I am home I lay on my bed, I take deep breaths, I concentrate my thoughts on my toes, then I put a fan directly to my face, and it works like a charm. If I am driving, I do the same but I turn on the A/C with cold temperature and put it to my face, and my panic goes away! It looks like the cold air works pretty well for me (anyone who's reading this and have panic attacks, just try my "system").
Ok, here is my real problem: since these last strong panic attacks, I started feeling PVCs every single day, some days 10-20 an hour, some days I feel very few (for example, yesterday I felt 10 all day, max), but today I started feeling like 2 every minute, which I never felt (that's something like 3000 / day, which is far from my "standard" numbers). I obviously entered panic mode when I felt so many PVCs, my heart rate increased and somehow they went away with the fast heart beat. Then I managed to control the panic and heart rate is now around 80bpm, and I'm feeling those 2-3 every single minute. I'm going crazy with this, even if I'm calm now.
Why did I start feeling so many, after a period when I was a lot more calm than before? This issue is making my life terrible, I avoid going out many times because I feel I will have some kind of attack outside. Sometimes I even avoid exercising because I'm afraid I will have lots of consecutive PVCs during exercise and if it happens, I will have an uncontrollable panic attack! I really don't know what to do. I find myself checking my pulse to see if it's too low / too fast very often. I try not to do it, but I think I'm obsessed with this problem. By the way, I don't need to check my pulse to feel the PVCs, because I feel them very very well (in my throat, usually), even if they have no other effect on me.
Can anyone help me with this?
Thank you very much