The Complicated Cardio VS Gastro Symptoms

I have been able to go back in my life and pinpoint all the times this ANS has crossed paths with my life and in some way or another caused me a certain level of discomfort or a medical impossibility that had doctors scratching their heads and just ordering medications & tests more so for curiousity then anything else I think. This couldnt be more evident then the case of the 2001 ER visit with chest pain that has the ultimate history of all my hospital visits. Of course now, revealing the Dysautonomia connection, EVERYTHING makes sense but to the doctors involved back then, no one in the world was even on the page of an ANS dysfunction especially 10 years ago in a smaller Florida city.
Having arrived at the hospital with the tightness in the chest and some rather classic heart attack symptoms such as left arm numbness, left shoulder pain and into the neck, very pronounced heart rate disruption etc... it wasnt hard for the admitting RN to evaluate that something wasnt quite right based on entry blood pressure. Now they do take into consideration that if this is your first time with chest pain, BP will be elevated due to nerves and such but once I was IV'd, blood was drawn, Nitroglycerine was administered and suddenly my symptoms were beginning to fade away. So this is a testing tool for the doctors while the blood test is being sent out STAT, the Nitro being able to subside the issue allows them the possibility that this could be a valid pre-heart attack event that was caught at just the right interval so as to not cause major damage. The EKG will show severe interruption, damage, previous rythum issues but its not always acurate for things that are happening now or are happening so you are on constant telemetry until they can evaluate all the evidence in your case file so to speak. I had gotten some Morphine as well and it was the point at which I realized that I had a severe tolerance to the levels they gave me. When I requested more for a lingering area of my chest that was still proving painful the nurse looked at me cross eyed and told me that I had been injected with quite a large dose already and she'd have to get it approved. Of course I am thinking to myself, "am I not in a frigging hospital to resolve pain issues? START PUMPING MEDS WOMAN!" She did get another dose approved and commented that the doctor would be really watching my levels, it was then of course that they ask if you do recreational drugs. I have NEVER done any recreational drug or smoked even a cigarette in my life. I did however drink enough alcohol to support most of the bartenders in NJ, NY & PA so that probably assisted in my ability to resist the function of Morphine. Of course fast forward 10 years and I know that it was the Dysautonomia that actually didnt allow the Morphine to work. It was responsible for firing the nerves that caused me to be there in the first place so it was also responsible for the outcome of all testing and relief that was going to be happening as well. Its like having an evil twin inside you in a way.
The first blood draw was negative and two more would follow 8 hours apart so that automatically decided for me that I was staying the night. If you suffer any kind of heart muscle injury, your blood enzymes are erratic and will flag the chemistry team. Most people that suffer small attacks usually get past the first blood draw with a negative result & sometimes the second but seldom does someone who has had even the smallest of attacks get past the third draw without detection. What confused me on the blood draw issue and each of the numerous times I ended up in the hospital for this exact set of tests is why they need to stick you each time rather than use the IV line. I HATE needles, even when they came in to test my blood sugar, that little prick on the end of my finger, I swear if I had known what that was all about prior to him doing it I would have asked my wife to move aside so I could have kicked the SOB right through the sheet rock. Again, now knowing about the amplified nerve pain brought on by the ANS, I know that I wasnt being a baby about it, I just have a different pain level index on certain areas of my body then others do.
The cardiologist arrived and he was pretty confident that it wasnt a cardiac issue however due to job description & the fact that I had been to that ER before with a baseline EKG, he felt that safer was better than sorry. So the following morning I was going to be scheduled for an Echocardiogram with & without contrast and a stress test. Sounded good to me, nothing like some expensive heart tests to get your blood pumping in the morning.
The one thing you'll need to remember about being admitted to a cardiac observation floor is that there is NO SLEEP. I dont mean this as a joke, this is as serious as could be that by the time they wake you the 20th time you either want to have a major heart attack so you can sleep in intensive care or you try to evaluate if any of the drugs they administered will give you grounds for temporary insainity when you strangle them with the TV remote cable. I have literally done the cardiac floor a good 9 to 10 times and EVERY time I become so angry with the nurse and CNA that I am surprised I dont have that heart attack. It might be their intention, provoke an episode so it saves the doctor time and effort but my God, its so annoying. I understand they need to do certain things every four hours, thats wonderful but they manage to make it so that the RN's four hour project with you is over & just as you doze off again, here comes the CNA to do her four hour project. So now you have them every hour & figure you are in the clear until in walks the phlebotomist ready to draw blood on the third hour. So its a constant revolving door and if you get an hour sleep solid its amazing. Gods honest truth, my first time in and deep into the wee hours the nurse wakes me up and says to me, "The doctor wrote you a prescription for sleeping pill, would you like one?" Notice I said, "WAKES ME UP". Yes this did happen. Now even with my extreme lack of sleep, I still have available to me a very wicked humor/sarcasm/anger option in my mind that can strike without being sensored so my response was to her, "See if directly under that prescription if he comments that if you need to wake me up to ask me this if I have permission to hit you with a bed pan directly across your head?" Not sure where this lady was from but all she said was, "so I'll say you declined it?" I just closed my eyes because any further engagement of any kind with her was going to cause a visit to the ER and not for me.
So bright and early in the am, 0700, I was downstairs preparing for my tests. No sleep but I knew that if I passed them I was going home! So the adrenaline from that was enough to get me rolling. I had the first phase of the Echo which happens prior to the stress test, kind of a baseline to see how things are working before they get you all fired up. I was then hooked up to the stress equipment & the tech noticed that I was beginning to slump over, I was having a pre-syncope event. I became overly drowsy & I thought now the lack of sleep had caught up with me but the doctor was immediatly called into the room and he jumped into action. He started to watch the EKG sheets as they were now beginning to print out. He saw something in my EKG that wasnt there the day before, however it wasnt something that a cardiologist finds concern with. Instead, he said, "this is cardiac, this is gastro, you have T wave abnormalities". WTF do I know doc, I feel like crap is all I am thinking to myself when he says "yep definately gastro, BUT you're already hooked up here, lets do the test so we can confirm 100% the heart is out of the race". This is just what you want to hear when you almost pass out that someone is now going to pistol whip your ass with the intentions to fully stress your heart out hoping to cause it to fail if theres a problem. I couldnt help but notice the crash cart all covered up in the corner so even though I felt as though I was dying I couldnt help but to crack some Jersey humor in that room to make myself feel better. I asked if the thing with the paddles in the corner was for making grilled cheese or were they going to pull it out as a precaution in case I went down for the count"? The tech was laughing outloud but the doctor was apparently aware I was from NJ, he just said that he had up to four minutes to decide shock or pump life back into me. I knew I was in good hands.
I of course passed the cardiac tests with flying colors and the cardiologist even tried to view the gall bladder with his Echo ultrasound equipment but it wasnt set to view that part of the body. He just told me that while I was here, he would get a gall bladder test ordered STAT while I was still NPO (Nothing Per Oral) and have some answers finally as to why I was in the hospital. I guess I was excited that I had T wave abnormalities, why not right? Well now of course understanding Dysautonomia, ST, T wave abnormalities along with negative test results for pretty evasive testing, its a huge red flag for ANS disorder. Again, who would have known.
I ended up having my first "upper & lower" as the lay person calls it. An EGD/Colonoscopy which I can tell you now, asking the techs to do the EGD first so your breath doesnt smell like crap just to lighten the mood doesnt really do that at all. They take their job a bit serious so my humor, not wanted. The prep was the worst part of the whole ordeal. Had I known it meant another night in the hospital & 431 trips to the toliet seeing things leave my colon that I consumed in grammar school, I probably would have opted for the out patient option. They feel it necessary to use one ply toliet paper as well rather than having compassion and giving you a box of wet wipes. Anyone who has had this done knows that if your home, wet wipes are gospel, in the hospital, they pretend you are enjoying the 80d sandpaper they have in the bathroom marked toliet paper. An aspirin/Tylenol is between $6-12.00 billed through the hospital. After the 7th trip to the bathroom a box of wet wipes could easily be billed $512.00 for 50 quantity and for sure, NO COMPLAINTANTS!
So after all said and done, both tests done, I find out that I have a rare case of Tourettes Syndrome coming out of anesthesia. This I did not know but given the fact that all the nurses including my wife were mouth wide open, gasping for air and firing away at Rosary Beads, it was obvious that any future procedures involving a full sleep it was important that I let them know what might happen. They not only knew I was apparently not happy with the assisting nurse in the procedure room but they also knew what ethnic background she was and had heard racial slurs that made Satan cringe. I am not that type of person in the awakened state, I like all people provided they are good people so not exactly sure what happened, not one person wanted to repeat anything that came out of my mouth. Good thing I havent seen it on YouTube either, I guess I'd have alot to explain there! I later had several Tourette issues coming out of anesthesia and although I have no memory of the incidents, the only ones that ever repeat portions of it will be the male nurses. The one said that I would have made Andrew Dice Clay look like an altar boy, wow thats a scary compliment! Without getting any further off track, the test results were negative and I was cleared of any types of gastro issues which meant I was referred back to cardiology.
I left the hospital after the gastro testing and really had no further information then I had when I went in other than I had T wave abnormalities. I probably should have begun to really research the hell out of that back then but I never felt I had to doubt the medical professionals before so I was willing to wait for the next time something when a foul. It turned out I didnt have to wait long, I was back in the hospital within a week but this time I went in via ambulance. I went out of commission while talking to the bosses wife in her office. I wasnt feeling well or looking good so she suggested I sit with her for a bit and after about 15 minutes or so I slumped over and it was curtains closed. Next thing I remember was EMS guys working on me to start IV, I was still in the seated position in the chair but now I was starting to recall things around me. They took me out via stretcher and I was once again at the same hospital. The same routine, blood draw, IV, Morphine and wait. Cardiologist came in and was extremely reluctant to proceed with the next level of testing. It meant the super evasive Catherization which has a list of complications when a doctor is going in to correct something, they certainly dont want to go in just to look around. My wife assured him that as a nurse herself she was puzzled but asked him to please figure something out because it was obvious something was happening and it needed to be resolved before I really did have a major issue. They always asked about stress and I was never one to have stress issues. In school, pile on the detentions, suspensions etc... no big deal, I'll take my punishment with a smile. At work, I always did 125% or better so never had issues with performance and as far as customer relations, I was the master at keeping things under control. We were newly weds for the most part so that wasnt it, the only thing going on was the fact that my wife decided that she needed, not wanted, needed to move into a "normal" house now. We originally had a premarriage plan to stay in a friends duplex for a couple of years to save up money, it was really low rent & for the most part a nice place for a couple, just not adequate for someone whos parents were living the 7 digit dream. So I was not really happy that we were now looking a year or two earlier than planned and pressure was on heavy to purchase. Knowing now that Dysautonomia takes and amplifies stress in an internal, disfunctional fashion and causes involuntary body functions to fail at will, it makes such sense as to the timing involved and how I was being pressured to go outside my comfort zone for this house issue. Externally stress just bounced off, internally, it was shutting organs down, I really love finding that out after the fact.
I had previously posted the results of my Catherization so I wont go on here but I will say it was negative for any visible internal glitches within the heart muscle and or any damage that had been caused by my past two weeks episodes. My cardiologist was now fully convinced it was not cardiac in nature and once again assured me it was gastro. He suggested that something was overlooked and that I should have further testing done to confirm for sure that the gall bladder wasnt the culprit. My cardiologist suspected the gall bladder from the first time he saw the T wave issues and it was 18 months later, numerous tests including a gall bladder dump test with dye that was also negative, CatScans, Ultrasounds, then due to an insurance change to an HMO with my wifes employments change, I then saw another 4 cardiologists along with more ER and overnight hospital visits. I had nuclear heart tests done, more stress tests, I was on as many as 6 heart related medicaions at the same time which caused me to not only have the most mellow heart rate it also calmed me to the point of a walking coma. I could have Jason from Friday the 13th, Jack the Ripper and Michael Myers running at me ready to do their thing and I would be cracking open a diet beverage and perhaps having a few crackers as if I had no where to go. I was also being monitored by an Internal Medicine doctor that would watch the levels of my bloodwork which were at times so outrageous that he'd call for a retest because my liver enzymes were in a range that were unbelievable to him. After the second draw, he'd see it was a legit draw and then order several other draws until my values dropped to normal. This would take 10 days or so and no answers as to why it happened. Again, Dysautonomia playing with every area of my body it could and causing all these doctors to go out of their minds searching for solutions.
The 5th cardiologist in the HMO group stopped all the other wild medications saying it wasnt heart related and basically booted me out of their groups care. I was relieved but right back to square one. Now I had no extreme medication blocks ready to combat an attack so I had to be ready for anything. I was able to go back to the previous cardiologist that started everything and now we were a year and a half past the original episodes & a super load of other testing had been done as well in other areas.
Later in 2002 almost 18 months after it all began, I had a new symptom. The chest pain, arm pain etc... was controlled by Nitro I carried with me at all times but now I had severe right abdominal pain that was so unbearable that I couldnt stand, sit, walk or lie down without severe pain. My Internal Medicine doctor admitted me into the hospital and I had 3 days of intense testing under not only him but a newly advised Gastroenterologist and I was NPO for all of the 3 days. Worst part was having all those test come back negative, blood work so extensive I was even tested for affects from the Moon Walk and still nothing. I was beyond pissed. I finally had something to eat and drink but within a short time of eating, the severe pain had resumed & I was beyond miserable. A long 3 doctor, my wife & I debate began about exploritory surgery which the surgeon was literally accusing my wife of purposely putting me under the knife for no reason. No evidence whatsoever supported any findings of any organ especially the gall bladder of failure. It was literally going to be a surgical exploration. There was a definate no from two of the doctors that gall bladder was a problem and a possible 10% chance from the other. I was about to undergo surgery based on 10% confidence of finding an issue. I was so miserable that I was prepared to go with 0% chance. Surgical time set, and the next morning I was wheeled to the OR for surgery.
I woke up screaming in pain, thought I was still in OR having procedure & a nurse was yelling at me that I wasnt premitted to speak like that, whatever that meant. Then I could hear the words I was using, wow consciously saying them was making me blush I couldnt imagine what I said prior to realizing what was being said. They pumped me so full of Morphine that they advised my wife that I had a full days dose right there and then and with that I was unable to really yell out anymore, it was all internalized. I could hear them and I was yelling to them more meds, something stronger but words werent leaving my lips. I could hear them say that my vitals were off the charts, heart rate, BP and especially my breathing was extremely erratic and labored. My body was fighting the Morphine rather than letting it help calm the pain. So now instead of being able to verbalize how excruciating the pain was, they had put my mind in twilight and I could hear them but they couldnt hear me. What an experience let me tell you.
In the end, surgeon arrives to say that the gall bladder was diseased, not the conventional way they are used to seeing it, very hard to detect even with a visual. But again here we are with Dysautonomia fully undetected and its ability to inflamate areas by cause nerve interruption thus creating the illusion of a failed organ. Notoriously speaking, Dysautonomia loves to assualt the gall bladder because of that organs ability to mimic other bodily function errors. Its an easy target and without the presence of gallstones, its almost completely impossible for modern medicine to confirm a gall bladder failure. It takes a surgical intervention such as mine to even view the possibility of an issue. Had ANS disorder ever been discovered, I might still have my gall bladder today. There was talk of a Tilt Table test being done to me in early 2002 and I wish it had been, I am confident that something would have come up during that test and I would have saved years of heartache, dispair and nightmares related to health.
In closing its best to not necessarily challenge a doctor to proceed but I think to take not to the fact that I had some really disturbing complications that caused me to go so far as to do a heart catherization and the exploritory surgery. Thats why I get so aggravated when someone says it was in my head, as if I would voluntarily subject myself to that kind of torture because its a mental illness. Yea, sure, read up on Dysautonomia doubter and educate yourself so that the next person like myself that comes along you know what you are doing. Thanks for reading