Aortic Stenosis diagnosis=severe anxiety relapse - please help if you can!(LONG POST)

[Guest]

I used to have REALLY bad anxiety growing up. I had an abusive brother (who still lives with me, though he's not PHYSICALLY abusive to me anymore. He is mentally abusive still, but I've learned to get around that which is an amazing skill to have working in retail lol) who would go BERSERK on me for very small reasons. I also had an emotionally abusive mother who would scream at me for skipping school (which just made me skip more because I was skipping for anxiety reasons), and guilt trip me for being a "loser". Because of all this (and more) I often lived in a constant state of recovering from an anxiety attack or having one. I definitely have GAD, but my hypochondria is the thing that sparks the attacks for me.

Slowly, as time went on I got better at dealing with my anxiety by my own means. No drugs, no therapy, just research and understanding that I wasn't going to die from one of these attacks. That these weren't mini strokes or signs of heart attack, but signs of extreme stress. I eventually found myself mostly 'cured' from attacks in general, and hadn't had one in years --- until today.

I was diagnosed with BAVD when I was a baby, and just a few months ago: Aortic Stenosis(~1.5cm).
This has heightened my hypochondria a LOT. I've been getting every sort of "sign of heart attack" symptom known to man, all of which I'm almost 100% certain are anxiety or stress related.
It started with chest pains, which occurred rarely (once every few days) to eventually very frequently (a couple times every day) until I settled myself down and grasped reality once again.

It seems the anxiety symptoms are evolving though. Just an hour ago I genuinely thought I was having a stroke.
Face felt sort of numb (cheeks, not half, and I could talk perfectly fine). I got a sharp pain in my left arm, and sudden tightness in my chest.
I freaked out, got my brother to watch me with his phone ready to call 911 (didn't have him call right away because it wasn't half my face, I could talk fine, and it seemed to be a weird mix of 'heart attack' symptoms and 'stroke symptoms' so I figured the simplest answer would be that I was having an anxiety attack).

I later Googled all my symptoms, and they all match up as anxiety symptoms, but they're also pretty close to a "mini stroke" which is a warning sign for a stroke. (So obviously my hypochondria is going to town on that still.)

As I'm typing this I'm still recovering from the anxiety attack I just had. Sorry if I seem super ramble-y.

I'm 21, my valve is 1.5cm, I'm 190 pounds, 6'1, and I'm transitioning into a vegan diet.

Thank you to anyone who read my entire post --- even if you don't comment. It's a ton to read, and I appreciate it!

 

[tigerlily]

Hello guest, I suffer from anxiety from time to time and I've had panic attacks before so I know a little about what you are experiencing. When is your next appointment with your cardiologist? I think the best way to get some piece of mind about your heart is through talking to him/her and testing. This is a small trick but it helps me. When I begin to feel anxious, I ground myself as best I can by sensory information. I ask myself to feel the weight of my body on the floor I'm standing on or the chair I'm in. I ask what the surface of the seat feels like. I feel with my hands whatever is next to me or in front of me and ask myself questions about what I feel. Is there a texture? Is the surface hot or cold, etc. I look at a clock and tell myself where I am and what the time and date is. I describe to myself the way the sky looks and examine the trees if I'm outside. I drink something cold. You get the idea. It may sound crazy but it works for me. It gets me out of some future place or even some past place and into the present. Hope that may help a little. I was abused too growing up and I tend to imagine worse case scenarios for myself. Not that I haven't been truly challenged with real life events at times. Hang in there. Others will respond.

 

[honeybunny]

tigerlily , I did something very similar when I had panic attacks years ago. I would practice what I now know as mindfulness, noting everything I was doing. For example, I'd go for a walk and note, now I'm putting my right foot dow, now my left, now I'm stepping over a crack, etc. it was pretty much the same as your technique except I didn't focus specifically on the senses, but that's a great idea. Like you and guest I grew up with an abusive father then married an abusive first husband (20 year marriage).

Guest, are you seeing a cardiologist for these symptoms? I like that you acknowledge the effects anxiety can have on you physically but I think you need to be under a doctor's care. As TigerLily said, hang in there.

 

[Zoltania]

A book that might be helpful to you is "An End to Panic" by Elke Zuercher-White. My local Kaiser uses this as the textbook for its panic support group (which is actually a 4-week course, one evening per week). The book gives detailed steps for learning to deal with panic attacks. It also lists the physical symptoms that can be created by panic. I was surprised to find out that even symptoms like visual disturbances and tingling fingers/hands can be caused by panic.

Of course you want to make sure that your cardiologist is monitoring you appropriately too. [h=3][/h]

 

[AZ Don]

I find that an Attitude of Gratitude is helpful to me in times of uncertainty and stress. It is harder to be anxious, fearful, or depressed when you are focused on the positives in your life. I think Mindfulness is a great practice as well.

 

[Nocturne]

Hm. I never had much in the way of anxiety in the past, but life dumped some real doozies on me about three years ago now and I became an instant wreck in large part due to a mysterious hormonal problem (testosterone levels in the "near castrate" range, according to my doc). Recovering from that left me feeling like I had some kind of PTSD -- no one knew where the issue had come from or exactly why it started to clear up, so of course I constantly worried about a relapse. At my worst I was waking up at 5:00 am or earlier and trembling, completely unable to get back to sleep because of the anxious thoughts flooding my mind.

And THEN I learned I had AVS (not the typical bicuspid kind like you'd expect a 42 year old to get, no, the calcific degenerative kind, the kind old people get). And coronary artery disease. And, most recently, a genetic abnormality that has contributed greatly to both, and is viewed by the medical establishment as "untreatable" at this time.

So yes -- terrible anxiety all around. And as you know, anxiety is compounded when you do in fact have something concrete to worry about! Your heart has a very real and life threatening problem! Who WOULDN'T feel anxiety about that?

I can't offer a lot of advice becsuse as I said I have not been dealing with anything like this prior to that past three years. However I can tell you that just going for walks when I am stressed can help me a lot, and that there is one supplement I started taking (after trying this and that) that really has helped -- GABA. I get it at the GNC and take one every night before bed. Helped me pretty quickly -- but that is probably something pretty specific to my body chemistry, so who can say if it would help you or not?

Good luck. Anxiety sucks.