Pulmonary Embolism Support Group
By far the most common form of pulmonary embolism is a thromboembolism, which occurs when a blood clot, generally a venous thrombus, becomes dislodged from its site of formation and embolizes to the arterial blood supply of one of the lungs. Symptoms may include difficulty breathing, pain during breathing, and more rarely circulatory instability and death.
They had me see my cardiologist today and he said it can be a number of things, like we all discussed. And it can also be a part of recovery from PE. Again, I heard it takes a LONG time. And with other medical issues you can have all kinds of problems. So, for me, I'm not allowed to do pulmonary rehab until we have resolved this. They are going to hook me up to a monitor for 2 weeks and I have an Echo tomorrow. Oh...and if the pulmonary hypertension is not gone, that could cause this. But he did stress that as the clots are reabsorbed and become smaller or even move somewhat, you can develop all kinds of problems along the way. And he was AMAZED that I would even consider working 8 hour days yet. Of course, that is me and my case....I do have severe asthma and Congestive Heart Failure and a stent and kidney problems, before the PE. And I'm almost 56. So, again, we can look across the board and see those of us that had almost no problem in recovery. And some that take longer. Some have lasting damage and some none. But it's GREAT to have people that understand, know what we are going through and can offer encouragement, strength, hope and anything else we need. Cause once again, I am frustrated. A week ago I cleaned out the entire refrigerator...today, I am winded getting dresses. So, let's see what tomorrow holds. I work 5 hours and then go for the Echo.
I know it seems super frustrating right now, but you are moving forward, just in smaller steps than you want. At least you've got concerned, pro-active docs on your side ... sometimes that can make all the difference!
What they concluded was that there was no strange arrhythmia going on but that my heart did occasionally skip a beat or prematurely beat and also my heart tends to overreact to any exercise. When I was at the stress test my heart was at 120 before I took a single step on the treadmill and made it up to 180 at the top level of incline. What my doctor explained was that sometimes after you have a big traumatic incident in your health, your heart can take awhile (even years) to get back to normal behavior. They aren't really sure why, but that it wasn't anything dangerous (in my case). The problem is also exacerbated by the fact that I have very low blood pressure and so just standing up will cause my heart to go into overdrive to get blood up to my head. I've been told to add more salt to my diet, stay hydrated, and also try a magnesium supplement which he said some people say really makes a difference with the palpitations.
I hope your test went well and that they help you start to feel better! It's so frustrating to feel like you're being limited and held back by your health still, but there is definitely peace of mind in getting the tests done and hopefully knowing that nothing dangerous is happening.