Royalties and Heartbreak
in Health ·
I really hope this offers you some sort of clarity... I’m 23 myself, and my history is a bit of a mess—I had heart surgery when I was barely five, which left my sternum healed slightly unevenly (my right side sticks out quite noticeably compared to the left). Occasionally, especially when the weather shifts—which always seems to trigger something—I get this tightness in my chest, coupled with constant aches in my neck, right shoulder, and scapula due to cervical kyphosis. Since I’ve dealt with cardiac-related pains and intense arrhythmias multiple times since that childhood surgery, I’ve become something of an amateur expert at distinguishing between actual "heart pain" and just the discomfort caused by my crooked sternum. Based on everything you’ve shared, I have a hunch that those pains are stemming from the kyphosis—and then the anxiety kicks in, which likely triggers that suffocating sensation and the racing heart (even though they say it isn't technically tachycardia unless it tops 100 bpm). Is your heart rate consistently that high? What kind of cardiac workups have you actually gone through? And how many milligrams of beta-blockers are you currently taking?