December 18- Heart Troubles

Day before yesterday, I had started having this pain in my chest. It wouldn't go away except for when I stood up or sat up, but it would worsen when laying flat on my back or when taking deep breaths. I first thought it was just gas and it would go away when I went to bed that night, but woke up to find it even worse than the day before. I went to the hospital where they did all kinds of tests to see if I was having any trouble with my heart that would be causing the pain. The EKG came out fine as well as my blood work and my X-ray, so my ribs and heart were okay. The doctor finally came to the conclusion that I had pericarditis, which is the inflammation and swelling of the covering of the heart. The condition can occur in the days or weeks following a heart attack or can also be caused by influenza or any other virus that attacked my respiratory system.
Thing is, I never was sick with any virus prior to my chest pain. I also do not have HIV, which is another rare cause of pericarditis. Of course, I don't recall having had a heart attack either, so after finding out that my condition could have been caused by a heat attack, I did some research on heart attacks and discovered there are three types of attacks a person can suffer from. There is the mild heart attack, severe heart attack, and also a silent heart attack. The differences between mild and severe is very clear to where with a mild one people with them feel little pain to the point where they may not recognize it as a heart attack and with a severe one they feel lots of pain and one would know they are having one. With a silent heart attack, there is no pain or any other symptoms making it hard to tell a person they are having one at all. These I figure can be either mild or severe but would still go unnoticed. "Most heart attacks are caused by a blood clot that blocks one of the coronary arteries. In atherosclerosis, plaque builds up in the walls of your coronary arteries. Occasionally, sudden, significant emotional or physical stress, including an illness, can trigger a heart attack."- excerpts from an article on heart attacks from Medicine Plus
Also from the same site above I discovered that the symptoms of pericarditis after a heart attack are anxiety, chest pain that "May come and go (recur), be sharp and stabbing (pleuritic) or tight and crushing (ischemic), get worse when breathing and may go away when you stand or sit up or move to the neck, shoulder, back, or abdomen", difficulty breathing (shortness of breath), fast heart rate, dry cough, fatigue, fever (more common with second type of pericarditis), general ill feeling, and splinting of ribs (bending over or holding the chest) when breathing. Out of these I was feeling anxiety, chest pain as mentioned above in my first paragraph, difficulty breathing, and fatigue. I'm not sure what it means by bending over or holding the chest because the pain would cause me to do just that, so it could be splinting of the ribs I had as well. This of course lead me to believe that it had to be I had a silent heart attack from all the emotional stress I have indeed been under all this time.
I guess the bottom line is that at least I got the medicine for the pericarditis, so my inflammation will at least be cared for. I just wish they could have been able to tell whether or not I had had a heart attack so that I could get some help to prevent another one, but I don't think heart attacks that occurred several days before and not occurring at the time of testing can be found out. I just have to watch my stress levels and not get overly upset even though getting left at the hospital last night by my ex uncle in-law who once again put me on the side for his family is extremely upsetting since I always have to change my plans whenever he has to run to his family and also since I had cared enough about him when he went into the hospital to go stay the night with him. I am so tired of him doing this to me. I need to move out as quick as possible, but don't where I could go at this time. Hopefully, it won't be long before I can get out on my own and be done with all this.