High Tachycardia

Jewlez - I apologize that I cannot give you any answers. Like you, I have tachycardia, and I am going for an echo next week. I am 'assuming' the specialist your cardiologist is sending you to is an electrophysiologist. I hope that joining this group will give you some direction and possible answers. I wish you the best.

Hi Jewlez, after reading your post I feel compelled to reply. I am so sorry you feel so desperate and overwhelmed. I am no expert, and I imagine you will have many on this site more knowledgeable than me with advice, but thought I'd just offer a few hints. I was diagnosed with atrial tachycardia a year and 3 months ago. I am on metoprolol succinate 50 also. It has been important to me to try to control the episodes doing the following. I take the metoprolol the same time every day with food. If I don't get enough sleep I'll get episodes throughout the day. Trying to minimize stress has helped too. It sounds like between your parents, kids and high stress job you probably don't take much time for yourself. I worked as a 911 dispatcher for 35 years so have a bit of experience knowing how hard it can be to just STOP. Try to find just a few minutes a day to breathe, listen to some calming music and close your eyes, taking some time for yourself. I also stopped all caffeine and alcohol, and cut back a lot on sugar. Several people on this site seem to have had some good results upping their magnesium intake, some using Heart Calm. Having this condition is difficult and scary. Finding some ways to help yourself deal with it is a process. I wish you the best.

@jewlez I read your experience, and I am going to share mine, mainly because I was kind of in the same boat that you were in in some regards and hopefully what I share will be helpful and can send you in a good direction. I know for every person, they have a different Health path, and sometimes a different direction on how they want to accomplish it, but ultimately all want an answer as to what is causing the medical issues. I have found this for him to be incredibly helpful for many of my health issues, not necessarily to go in the same direction as others, but to see what others did to help themselves with whatever path they took. I did not have any family history of heart issues. I myself did not have heart issues up until three years ago. Randomly I started having heart palpitations that felt like I was going to have a heart attack. At that at that point, I was assigned a cardiologist and interventional cardiologist I had to go through the stress test where a monitor see where I was at. Before this had all happened. I was immediately taken off my Synthroid and estrogen. When this happened, I did not make the connection. I did not make the connection until later. I was found to be having heart arrhythmias and palpitations. I was never put back on the estrogen or Synthroid and after a year, in the middle of the night I would start having SVTs. My SVTs would last 20 seconds of the heart beating over 200 beats per minute. This scared me to death. Imagine you are sleeping and you are in a calm sense of space and then your heart starts doing something very erratic. My cardiologist said it was normal. When your heart starts doing that it’s because something is wrong in the body and it is not normal. I get very frustrated by physicians or medical providers who say this is normal it’s not normal. There is a reason why your heart is doing it. I then randomly started emailing top cardiologists in the country. I got a response back from Albert Jung of NY Langone, saying it was not normal get a second opinion. So I started to try and get a second opinion, and my own cardiologist would not give me a second opinion, and this was in the same clinic seeing a different doctor they just dismissed me. I decided to pursue the answers on my own, mainly because I wanted to understand why this was happening. I had no history and it did not make sense, but I knew that there was a reason for why it was happening. I am not a doctor, but in the research that I’ve read, SVT’s or like misfiring of electrical activity in the heart. When speaking to different people about the situation, I would ask what would cause something like this randomly. I would get medication’s could cause this, stress stressed to the heart could cause this, a state of fear could cause this. So I did a lot of research and I have not totally answered the question but I think that I’m on the right path to answering it. I believe mine is caused by my thyroid issue. The physicians and doctors that I was seen were not connecting the dots. For me after doing the research the thyroid if it is not dosed properly or if you’re taken off medication abruptly, it can result in this. I also found that I was just given a T4 for over eight years for my thyroid. The thyroid needs more than just T4. I actually think that once I can see an endocrinologist and peace the puzzle pieces together I will find that this may be why I’m having these heart arrhythmias and SVTs. I would look at specific areas in your life if you have any other medical conditions or you’re on any kind of prescription, see if that is maybe what is causing it or what could cause it. A lot of of these conditions near other conditions and sometimes it’s very difficult to connect the dots. It takes time and research and pouring through medical journals like I have. I remember just feeling completely exhausted all the time like you talk about, and being stressed out from regular life and it’s problems. I wanted answers desperately, and I got frustrated with doctors just saying that it was normal when it’s not normal. For me, I started journaling down everything that I was experiencing, and when I started experiencing it. For me, I am going to try and get into an endocrinologist and have the entire lab work done to make sure that I can get the answers to these questions, because I simply was not getting the answers from the doctors anymore. They were not seeing me or they just pushed me away and said it was normal. I didn’t feel normal. I don’t know if your insurance will allow you to speak to one of the Mayo Clinic doctors but I know that is an option mine unfortunately didn’t. And I honestly don’t know what they charge. You would have to ask them if you decide to go that route. I tried to go that route, but that was not an option for me because of the insurance so I am opting to go through an endocrinologist and have my blood test done extensively, and see what they say. For me I believe mine is the thyroid. I say that because all the issues started when I was abruptly taken off of the thyroid medication and the estrogen. I know the thyroid and the parathyroid are regulators of everything in your body. The nice thing about this form as you can ask a lot of questions moderators will even chime in to direct you in a manner that is very helpful to find answers to your questions. I wanted to find answers to the root of the cause rather than just have medication’s thrown at me for symptoms, that way in hopes of alleviating the issue. I hope that you find all the answers to your questions, as I understand, it is so frustrating and overwhelming. I think you’re in the right place for asking questions and getting help and talking to others that have gone through similar circumstances as you and I wish you the best.

A cardiologist is a specialist in heart issues, but not necessarily in fixing all issues. The person you need to see is an 'electrophysiologist', or an expert in electrical disorders of the heart, which is what you have.

It is perfectly normal to be frozen in fear when one's heart begins to act up for no apparent reason, and it's even worse when you finally get to see a cardiologist who scratches her head and says, 'Beats me.' There is an answer, and the answer is probably going to be one of two interventions: a catheter ablation to block the inflow of the extra signal(s) to beat, or you'll need a pacemaker, which can be more involved than just hooking you up to a small appliance that gets inserted under your chest muscle. We can deal with the nuances of that process later, if it comes to that.
For now, you should avail yourself of a really good, a really busy, and highly accomplished, electrophysiologist (EP) and get an initial consultation going ASAP. If you have the resources to travel and to say a couple of nights in commercial lodgings in order to get to the best EP inside of a day's travel, driving or flying, I would urge you to do that.

Thank you so very much for your suggestions and insight!! I will definitely try all of those!