nerve pain mimics heart attack pain

[Angina42]

Hi all

I had a heart attack in February of this year. 3 stents were put in and was successful.

In my recovery period I’ve lost 32kg eating healthy and cutting out all junk food, soda and limiting coffee from 10 to only 1 a day. I’ve halved my bad cholesterol and all my bloods are normal and in healthy range.

I’ve had pain since about 6 weeks after the heart attack. It started when I went back to work and got months it has become worse and more consistent.

I’ve had so many tests including

Stress echocardiogram

Ct scan with and without dye

X-ray

Blood tests

Bone scan

my osteopath diagnosed me with costochondritis but I’ve recently seen a pain specialist who diagnosed me with nerve issues stemming from the thoracic area in my spine. This can cause pain that radiates from back, ribs, shoulders arms, chest, sternum and abdomen.

I’m now on nerve pain medication also on opioid slow release plus I have panadine forte (codeine) and Valium for immediate relief when needed.

I just wanted to know if anyone else out there has gone through similar nerve pain and if your pain mimics heart attacks from time to time.

I had an episode this morning where I thought I could be having another heart attack but with a Valium and panadine my pain eased within half an hour and I went back to bed.

I’m anxious even though all my heart tests have been clear and in working order.

My GP is happy and so is my cardiologist and they both think my heart is working fine.

This all doesn’t stop the anxiety for me and my pain is really affecting my left side. This of course is where the heart is and any pain there really triggers me. I try to rationalise it by thinking about all the tests I’ve passed. I’ve also changed my whole health side of things too.

I just wanted to hear from anyone that may experience the same pain and anxiety surrounding this.

Thank you so much ♥️

[Scotsman53]

You might find this difficult to understand or believe but anxiety can cause pain! Real pain, not imaginary. I'm in this position myself. It's called a number of different things, neuroplastic, neurogenic, mindbody syndrome (MBS) etc. There's a number of support groups online, a good one is facebook.com/groups/6958233...

[cyberbarn]

I am sorry to hear you have this type of nerve pain. It is so easy to assume that pain is being caused by the most frequent causes of pain, rather than the rarer causes.

My son had abdominal pain and all the clinicians bar the endoscopist jumped on the gastro bandwagon. All of them! And yet nerve entrapment is the next most common cause of abdominal pain after gastro problems.

Eventually I had to put my foot down and say no, it isn't constipation, please investigate further, here are the peer reviewed papers that say it won't be GI related.

Finally after a year he was diagnosed with ACNES, abdominal cutaneous nerve entrapment syndrome. Similar to your thoracic problem, which is one of the things they had to check for in my son.

Our brains are inside our heads, and they can't actually see where the pain is coming from, they have to rely on the signals from the nerves but nerves are not very accurate in reporting where the pain is actually coming from. So our brains naturally jump to the most common cause that everyone knows about.

It can be really hard to tell the brain to shut up sometimes! But if you know that you have the thoracic problem, you just need to be really firm with that brain and tell it to behave!

Easier said than done, but my son calls it playing with his brain. And sometimes just ignoring it too!

Good luck, I hope things settle for you soon.

[Westie2012]

I was diagnosed with costochondritis about a year after having pericarditis , my gp thought it could be peri again and sent me to hospital for tests . Thankfully it wasn’t peri, but the pain I gave with costochondritis is worrying at times as it’s on my left side by ribs . I’m having a bad flare up at the moment and it can feel scary . I would say it causes anxiety as not being able to see the cause of any pain leaves us guessing and hoping it’s not serious . I have a pacemaker and before I was diagnosed with a heart condition I was told repeatedly my symptoms were caused by stress and anxiety so sometimes I wonder whether my symptoms warrant checking over or not .