Diagnosing myself

I started having these irregular heartbeats back in January. When they first started happening I thought oh well, palpitations again. They come and go. Well, this time they didn't go! They stayed 24/7 and were more than the usual racing beat or extra beat or skipped beat. It was near constant.

I went to see my regular doctor and she said I had high blood pressure because every time I go in my bp reads high...never mind that every time I go in I am either in pain or sick and that can elevate bp. No, she says I need medicine or I could have a stroke or something. SO, I took the Inderal she prescribed. That's when the irregular heartbeats became a regular thing.

Went off to the cardiologist. He put me on a different beta blocker which didn't do anything except turn me into a zombie. I was butt-draggin' tired all the time. And my pulse was 45! So, he tried adjusting the dosage. All that did was make me a little less sleepy, but the irregular heartbeat never normalized.

Then I saw a gastro doctor and a lung doctor in between. The lung guy found I have a nodule in my right lung that I have to have rescanned in August. Probably a rheumatoid nodule from the RA but he wants to be sure. Then went to a gastro doc who did an endoscopy that would tell if I had ulcers again. Had that done on the 9th of this month and sure enough...ulcers are back and gastritis. He put me on ulcer meds and one of them didn't agree with me...made my throat and food pipe burn...why? The dumbasses never told me I had to DISSOLVE the tablet in water and drink it! It was getting stuck and all the medicine staying in my esophagus!

In the meantime the cardiologist told me to stop the BP med and let things get out of my system before starting another drug. I did that and the heartbeat was still constantly irregular. SO I did some research on my own about GERD, (I also have a hiatus hernia) and heart irregularities and guess what? There IS a connection. So I called the gastro guy again and asked him and he says that he often has patients end up in ER for cardiac symptoms that are triggered by the ulcers and gastritis. There is a nerve that runs from your brain, through your neck and down to the espohagus, heart and other organs. When irritated it can cause heart irregularities. So, he gave me some different medicine and said to stay on a bland diet and guess what? I am happy to report that the irregular heartbeat seems to be settling back to some sort of normalcy...thank goodness.

Sometimes we just have to do the detective work ourselves.