See this post from earlier
See this post from earlier
As you say, it can be quite slow to resolve but a diagnosis that is usually a relief in a young(ish!) person with chest pain when compared to the other possible diagnoses. Presumably you had your borrelia serology checked for Lyme disease as part of your investigations? Pericarditis occurs in approximately 10% of cases. Likewise with Hester's knee - reactive arthritis is also common with Lyme.
Hester's had a Lyme blood test and is okay. As far as I know the two blood tests I've had didn't specifically check for Lyme disease so maybe I should raise that with my doctor. That said I'm not usually prone to ticks, haven't noticed any ticks on me and haven't had one of those tick bite circular rashes. thanks for the tip off thoughOriginally Posted by ghost
Brian,
Good to see you & the dogs at the bottom of Horton Scar Lane, this afternoon.
Ian.
I was a bit of an oddball until I was abducted by aliens; but I'm perfectly OK now!
Hi Ian. Yeah I'd chuffed up Ingleborough and over Simon Fell to see the cyclo-crossers. My running was faster than walking.... just
Probably (and knowing my luck at the severe risk of putting a complete kybosh on things by saying so), after 4 really crappy months, I'm just starting to believe that I'm finally, nearly, almost over my attack of pericarditis..... touch wood!
Pericarditis, something I'd never heard of until I got it, looks and feels like a heart attack when it comes on so needless to say its a bit of a shock and darn tooting scary to get, particularly up until the point that you're condition is diagnosed. I was rushed to hospital on 5th July with just those symptoms but, fortunately (or so it felt at the time), after a full angiogram, a shed load of ECG's and an ultrasound scan of the heart, I "just" had pericarditis. This is a swelling of the membrane around the heart (full explanation here) and, at its best, pericarditis usually clears up on its own, often quite quickly with treatment, but, at its worst, you can in fact die of it, with lots of potential to have an attack of pericarditis plonked somewhere between both ends of the spectrum. The actual cause of pericarditis is often unknown but as a reaction to a virus is most common and, although I'm cracking on now age wise, its nothing particularly to do with age either - it can strike at any time apparently, although is most common between the ages of 20 and 50 and more common in men than women.
The consultant at LGI who diagnosed my pericarditis told me to take a strong dosage of anti-inflammatories for three days and to take it easy for a week or two and I should be fine!
Well... apart from the heart palpitations, especially at night when trying to sleep, the high blood pressure, the perpetual exhaustion (presumably from not sleeping well at night because of the palpitations), the pain in the top centre of my back (one of my original symptoms and the slowest to go away), occasional nausea, a constrcted feeling in my upper chest and neck, for a time the chronic indigestion (indirectly a result of taking too many ibuprofen but cleared up by taking ant-acid tablets and stopping with the ibuprofen) and for another spell the difficulty breathing, especially when trying to go running and doubly so if I tried running up hill..... I didn't feel at all 'fine' for 3 full months!
In fact it was only about 3 weeks ago when I started to feel more normal when out running. I of course tried my damnedest to carry on running as best I could as soon as I could and, given that I coming out of the pericarditis tunnel now (touch wood again), maybe the carrying on or trying to carry on has paid dividends? Or maybe it slowed my recovery right down, who's to know?
In the process though it completely messed up my planned ultras for the year - Id planned for the High Peak Marathon in March, the Fellsman in April, the Lakeland 100 in July and the Lakes in a Day in October - I got the first two done and dusted but had to bail out on the last two, dagnabbit. I've also ruined my running blog this year too with it more or less turning into stories of trying to go out running while feeling crap before I've more or less pulled a plug on it for this year.
On the success side I've somehow managed to get all of my monthly runs round the 3 Peaks in so far this year, with ten down now and two to go. I have to admit though I felt really quite unwell doing it in August and even unweller when I managed to get round in September. Thankfully October's run round last Saturday felt far better and on Tuesday this week I even managed to blast a segment pb on strava while out in the hills headtorching
The most humbling thing of this whole episode has to have been the times other runners have overtaken me while I've been out in the hills trying to soldier on. They all smugly danced by me, leaving me to chug on and eat their dust.... the bastards
The other humbling thing has been that as far as symptoms were concerned, there's been nothing to show. To all outwards appearances I've generally looked fine. People at work stopped asking me how I felt after about a week!
Anyway, here's hoping I can get some fitness back now and never ever have fricking pericarditis ever again
Last edited by Stolly; 30-10-2015 at 03:36 PM.
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