Tachycardia

[S6041628]

I keep having intense missed beats and it freaks me out. I have a fast heart rate and take beta blockers. Im quite freaked out because of my missed beat it felt like a mini heart attack. I visited the docs and they didnt think it was a mini heart attack. But now i feel my heart will stop anytime. Im 21 years old and had palpitation since a young girl. Ive also feel lightheaded all the time and am extremely tired. Is it normal for me to feel like this?

[Recoder_Bill]

Hi S604…… ,

I think I know how you feel but of course we are all different ….. Fear not and talk to your GP and your cardiologist and ask them to explain your condition and what the medication should be doing for you.

For years I had ectopic heart beats now and again, i.e. heart beats in the wrong place, either occurring a bit early or a bit late. My GP was not concerned about this and said it’s quite common.

Coming more up to date, I was diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation (AF). My GP explained that with AF the top part of the heart, the atrium, is out of sync with the bottom half. So, the top is beating like mad and the bottom is carrying on as normal. This all means the blood does not get round your body very well.

I have continuous late or early beats; I don’t get more than 10 beats in the right place. Now and then my heart might race a bit or I might have palpitations but not often, when that does happen I just sit calmly until things settle down. Having said all that there have been times when my pulse was up to 200+ and I had palpitations and then I felt very unwell, light headed, hot, sweaty, not good.

Once I was diagnosed with AF my GP said the first thing is to make sure you are on blood thinning agents, which I was as I take warfarin for life because I have a mechanical aortic heart valve. This is very important because, if one has AF there is the chance of blood clots and stroke.

The second thing he did was to prescribe medication to slow my heart down to a more normal rate. He put me on a calcium channel blocker called dilitiazem, which did the trick and life became more normal for me. I still have continuous, erratic, heart beats but my resting pulse is about 70 and I rarely get palpitations.

However, recently they changed my medication to a Beta Blocker called Bisoprilol. I don’t get on with that drug at all. I feel tired and worn out all the time, if I try to read a book I drop off to sleep but oddly I find sleeping at night a bit of a problem … I can get to sleep ok but wake after a few hours and then can’t get back to sleep and even if I do it’ll be for a short time and then back to not sleeping again! I seem to permanently have a runny nose like I have a cold and I don’t have a cold. My hands feel very cold all the time but the thing I find worst is that my mood is very low and I find it difficult to get motivated to do anything.

Does this sound familiar to you?

These are all side effects of Bisoprilol.

So to answer your question, “Is it normal to feel like this?”, I’m not a clinician but if you are on Beta Blockers I suspect it is normal. The next question you might like to ask yourself is “Do I want to continue to feel like this?” … well I can tell you I’m not happy to carry on like this. So I am campaigning to go back to the dilitiazem because I didn’t notice any side effects from that.

I hope my tale of woe shows you that you are not alone in feeling the way you do.

Go talk to your GP and insist she/he does something to ease your symptoms.

Good luck.

Regards,

Phil.