saab
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I totally sympathise. Whenever I hear of anyone with heart problems I immediately start on 'what if?' - what if I'm as ill as they are but it hasn't been spotted? etc etc. To be honest, just hearing of anyone my age or younger with a serious illness, sets me off being anxious - but, remember, this is part of our anxiety. 'Catastrophic' thinking, applying things that have happened to others to ourselves, being unable to think logically about our health - it is all part of the anxiety that our pvc's etc. have led to us to develop.
This lady probably had a congenital heart defect - she may have been told she had stress and pvc's, but I bet she hadn't had half as many ecg's, tests as you have had. Yes, people do slip through the net, but they are few and far between - you'll be thinking, "..but what if I'm the one..", well it could just as easily be me, or anyone else out of the thousands of people being seen on the NHS for heart related stuff. So, statistically, it is unlikely to be you. I haven't had an ecg for 3 years and I'm not worrying about what this lady told you.
The trouble is, when we hear stories like this, our logic totally deserts us and we can't help but think it will happen to us. I often think it is strange that we only expect bad stuff to happen - I never wake up expecting to have won on the lottery. The test she had sounds like a specific test to confirm what they already thought she had - I have never heard of it as a rountine heart test. As RLR says, it sounds more like she was telling you her story for her benefit rather than yours.
It reminds me a bit of when I was on maternity leave, but due to go back to work - our son was only 3 months old when we were in a car accident. We weren't hurt, but a motorbike hit us head on at speed (biker recovered). The day after the accident I went to see a colleague and told her I wasn't sure I could return to work as planned. I told her about the accident, but she was pretty insistant that I actually had post-natal depression. I didn't at all - I was in shock from the accident (didn't realise it at the time). My point is, it turned out that she had had post-natal depression - she didn't want to accept that I didn't have the same as her.
I think the lady you met is a bit like my colleague - they have been through a terrible experience and that affects how they see things, ie. making a diagnosis for things which aren't there. Strangely, with my colleague I felt almost as though she wanted me to have PND - it would have made her feel better I think.
It is a bit like us really, except that while we constantly find things in our health to worry about, they find things in others.
I am sorry to ramble on, but I can imagine how this has upset you. My husband doesn't understand how reading/hearing about others illnesses can have any effect on me - quite rightly, he thinks What has it got to do with you? There are 65 million people in the UK who I haven't read/heard about today and whatever they are doing bears no relation to me whatsoever. Nothing that physically happens to them can affect me in any way. So why should the one that I do hear about about have any effect?
I hope you feel better soon. This is the kind of thing that can really set you back a bit with anxiety, but I hope you will come to look at it a bit more logically after a few days. Best wishes.
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