Good Luck Mary Ann. Hope they get some answers and you get relief. Sending good thoughts your way.

I'm having a lot of the sme symptoms and just had the stress test. The test isn't so bad, but a part of my heart doesn't seems to have less flow of blood, so I'll be having a catheterization. More scary.

Good luck. Hope all is good.

Ann- I had a treadmill and heart cath 6 years ago. The heart cath was not too bad and was really pretty fast. I hope you also find it so.
Had the stress test today and did OK. I really was short of breath and my legs were very weak and tired but I completed the test with no EKG changes. Now waiting on the results from the scan. While I was there, the woman next to me developed chest pain and EKG changes and they hauled her off to the heart cath lab. Guess I did better than that!
Mary Ann

That's what I thought after my echo, "Well, they didn't wheel me into the hospital."

Do they give you drugs to have the catheterization? I'm not crazy about being completely alert while they are poking around my heart.

Hello Mary Ann,
I am wondering whether your symptoms are due to drug-intolerance and an allergy to your medicines? These are "typical" symptoms for patients with SLE/MCTD when they suffer from a drug-intolerance/allergy to certain medicines and the symptoms can be almost eradicated by "only" changing the medicines. (Mind you it can take time to find the right replacement medicine which agrees with your body and does not give you side-effects, so patience is required...)
Your symptoms remind me of an episode I went through, when the ambulance brought me to hospital with uncontrolled hypertension and a suspected heart-attack, but it turned out that my symptoms were "only" a side-effect of a certain anti-hypertensive beta-blocker and the symptoms disappeared instantly when my beta-blocker was replaced with another anti-hypertensive medine, which was not a beta-blocker.
I wish you good luck with the stress test and I do hope everything turns out alright for you.
Best wishes from Kristina.

That was my thought exactly, but the DR wanted to make sure it was not a blockage causing my symptoms before changing the beta blocker. I was on a lower dose and doing OK but he decided my heart was still too fast and sometimes irregular- atrial tachycardia, not atrial fibrillation. He increased it once before and I reduced the dose back down because I had no blood pressure and was trying to pass out frequently. Since then my blood pressure has gone up and so he wanted to try again. The problem is the alternative meds have more side effects. If it was just my blood pressure it would not be as bad. Guess we will see.

Ann- They gave me a short acting sedative. It was not bad at all.
Mary Ann

Thanks for the info, Mary Ann.

Good luck Mary Ann and best wishes from
Kristina.

Finally got the report on the treadmill back and it was OK. Thyroid was good and I am not anemic. Today, I had a lot of wheezing and shortness of breath- like asthma, which I have been tested for twice and found not to have a problem with. At the time of one of the tests, I was also wheezing!
This time I am sure it is the Coreg I have been on. I cut the dose in half today and as the day went on I did feel a little better.
I also went to the Dr on Friday with symptoms of a urinary tract infection. My urine was cloudy with white cells and blood in it. Today, I get the culture report and it says there is no bacteria! I e mailed the Dr to see if I should stop the antibiotic, but have not heard back from that. I think it is interstitial cystitis which can feel like a UTI even with no infection. Oh well.
Thanks for all the good wishes during this latest crisis. Now what to do next.......
Mary Ann

I am very sorry Mary Ann, that really sounds like a difficult one to get medically sorted out and I wish you very good luck ! Please let us know the diagnosis and how everything develops...
Best wishes
from Kristina.

Hey, MT, sorry you've had a rough go of it.

I am very suspicious of your diagnosis, but I know you will take that with a grain of salt, because I am always very suspicious of the contemporary diagnostic process.

What kind of atrial tachycardia does your doctor think you have? MAT, VT? Was postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome ruled out-- because that's kind of what this sounds like, or something like that caused by beta blockers. Something similar happened to me when I took Lisinopril, which is an ACE inhibitor-- I was exhausted all the time, I couldn't body board without my heart pounding, so obviously I had to stop taking it. Then when I stopped taking it, the symptoms got even worse, and I didn't really feel right until I'd been off it six months.

I would never take any shit like that again-- beta blockers, ace inhibitors, statins. As you say, I do not intend to sleep my life away.

The idea that you have some kind of independent cardiac problem that never surfaced before or that you have that kind of problem secondary to MCTD just doesn't pass the smell test for me. Pericarditis would be more likely, but you don't have symptoms of that. I think there are some cardiomyopathies that can be a concern, but again, I think there's usually a history that precedes that. This whole thing feels like a tangent to me, a blind alley. I'm more concerned about the recurrent UTI-- those things can be really stubborn-- and MAYBE the wheezing. Maybe.

I am curious as to whether any of your symptoms predated the increase in the beta blocker. If the answer is no, it sounds like you're going down the right road by cutting back on the beta blockers.

Definitely keep an eye on the wheezing-- I suspect the drugs for that as well-- but I would watch for any symptoms of pulmonary embolism, of course, even though that's a long shot. That's something you might expect from MCTD, and we all want to avoid having our pulmonary systems compromised in any way because that's the primary vector for increased risk of mortality.

Keep us posted, hope you feel better soon.

The diagnosis is probable MAT but it has only been on my holter monitor and could not be triggered by the EP study which he says is typical of MAT because of the different foci in the heart that is triggering the tachycardia. I have had cardiomyopathy in the past. My last echo showed a normal ejection fraction. I started on the beta blocker after that diagnosis, but I had the rapid heart rate since I was a teen. He doubled the dose 6 months ago because my blood pressure was getting higher and I was still having some tachycardia. I was feeling great at that time. The day I increased the dose, I thought I was getting sick because I was so tired. I remembered the change in dosage when I took my evening dose. I tried to stick it out to see if I could adjust to it. Alternate drugs actually have more problems associated with them so I hate to change. I was doing OK except for the fatigue and a little shortness of breath when I did strenuous activity. Then I got an upper respiratory thing that everybody had. A cold with a cough. That was over a month ago. I got over the cold but my breathing just kept getting worse.
Now, I have been on half dose for 2 days and I feel better. Still some issues but I am still on the beta blocker. I had more energy yesterday, stayed up until midnight at a girls night out. Walked up stairs without feeling like I was running a marathon without training and my legs dont hurt like they were, which I did not expect. I thought that was something else.
You have some good ideas. I have thought I would try to get a chest x ray to rule out other stuff if this goes on. Maybe the cold triggered something. Everybody has listened to my lungs (including me) and they sound normal. No wheezing at the time. I would think a PE would not be so random in symptoms. Heart failure usually manifests itself in swollen ankles during the day and shortness of breath at night also. I have no problems with that.
Got to say, I worry about sclaraderma because it hits the heart and lungs although I have not shown signs of that. I think that was Josie's issue.
Thanks, any more ideas?
Mary Ann