For over a year now I’ve been suffering from strange symptoms. Some have gone and not returned, others come and go, and others persist. The lingering ones are chest pains (squeezing, tightness), shortness of breath, daily nausea, fatigue, heart palpitations, and sometimes feeling faint. Also some exercise intolerance.
Now while I don’t have an official diagnosis, the research I’ve been doing leads me to being very sure I have Coronary Microvascular Disease.
Your heart has major arteries. This is typically where things go wrong: one or more of them gets blocked and you have a heart attack. But your heart also consists of smaller arteries that branch off from the main ones and deliver blood to the heart. With CMD, the tiny arteries are damaged (the endothelium) and cannot properly deliver blood and nutrients to the heart. And that’s when angina occurs (micro vascular angina).
Now this is very sad for me to have at 27. There is a treatment being worked on but it’s not yet out. But it’s sad how my quality of life has taken a nose dive. I struggle to eat 1600 calories a day. I spend ~2 hours a day just eating (not counting cooking or cleaning up). If I eat too much, I’ll feel like I’m going to pass out or have a heart attack. And the thing is that IM RIGHT. My heart IS struggling to keep up. It’s NOT anxiety, or at least not exclusively anxiety. Of course I’m nervous to have this condition. But all I can do is take one day at a time and hope it either goes away (which it has in the past, although the space between flare ups continues to decrease) or I die instantly and end this nightmare.
Anyways, I thought I’d mention this in case any of you have similar struggles and symptoms. It seems like no one else here does though, which is good, but in all honesty makes me lonely and sad. Why did I have to be born such a freak?