rapid heart rate, very sick for 6 months, any ideas?

Posted by michelled15 @michelled15, 14 hours ago

Since March 2025 I have experienced severe left chest pain, tightness, pressure which sometimes radiates to side isolates to the left lower rib cage area. Further to this, I experience difficulty breathing, shortness or breath, tachycardia at rest, sometimes my HR goes to 160 bpm. At times, it feels as though I am having a heart attack or afib, vtach episodes, generally low blood pressure, sometimes high then drops significantly. I experience dizziness daily (not vertigo), lightheadedness, fatigue and severe weakness as well as low grade fevers and abdominal pain off and on.

I have had many ECGs, 3 echocardiograms, CT angiogram, cardiac MRI, Brain and T-spine MRI, Calcium CT score, Endopat test and several blood tests. The findings were a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) and a Atrial Septal Aneurysm with a significant R-L shunt as well as an incidental nutcracker syndrome finding. Blood work has been okay except a lower white blood cell count than normal.

I was previously very healthy and active. I have never experienced problems with my heart. Any suggestions on where to look?

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gloaming | @gloaming | 13 hours ago

It must be shocking to find all this out, but also to have been driven to get all the tests when you felt so unwell. SHEEESH!
I can't offer any guidance, sorry. It's not in my experience. I have AF, but it is well controlled after two ablations. My heart and vasculature is otherwise fine.
I don't know about your history, how hard you worked your heart in past years, nor do I know your age. However, the heart does age, and with age comes several heart conditions. Often it's a bad valve, or three, or it is rogue firing cells in the various walls of the heart that can awaken and try to take over the heart's rhythm....chaotically. This is what happens with many arrhythmias, notably the fibrillating kind. I know nothing about PFO, but it seems to me that if it were present in younger years it would have affected your ability to do hard work? Maybe not. Both the AF and the PFO raise the risk of stroke, so I hope you can report that you are on apixaban, rivaroxaban, or coumadin.....?

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