Hi everyone.
I just need some advice.
I have chronic health anxiety and OCD. I’ve had a lot of traumatic experiences regarding health either my own or families.
However, started feeling anxious about my own health after a bad bout of tonsillitis and things have spiralled since.
Last week I started to get a tight feeling in my chest and and felt a bit breathless. I tried to shrug it off and then I travelled a couple of hours to Birmingham.
The whole journey my heart was racing and I just felt so anxious and right chested. I was hoping seeing my friends would distract me and it would go away. It just got worse. So I decided to go to AE. (I had an incident about 2.5 years ago when I had a pleural effusion but it was benign and went away and this was my main concern). The wait as AE was just awful. I was on my own, 2.5 hours away from home and the wait was 6 hours. They did an ECG/chest X-ray and bloods and they all came back clear. Doc wanted to rule out blood clots and so I did another blood test D Dimer which came back at 590 normal range 500. The doc said I would need to go back for a scan and I mentioned that I was due to go home the next day and he said he could print out a discharge letter and I would take it to my local AE and they would follow up. He said that this result didn’t mean I have a clot but it was probable. He was happy for me to drive home and go to the AE. They gave me an injection and I went on my way.
Obviously in a state, I managed to get to my local AE less than 10 hours later. They said as the discharge letter was so bad they would re do all the tests and start from scratch. They didn’t understand the type of D Dimer test they did in Birmingham as they have different levels. They work with a normal range of 250 and if it’s under that there are no concerns. They redid all the tests and this time my D Dimer result came back as negative (range of 150 or something) and I didn’t need the CT. I asked if the blood thinning injection would have made this result lesser and the nurse said no as it wouldn’t work that quicker and I mustn’t have had a clot in the first place.
Two days later my chest is slightly better but I can still feel my heart racing a bit ( though - not as bad as Friday!). I can’t help but think they’ve made a mistake and they should have done the CT scan??
Any advice