I’ve had a few instances of feeling I’m not getting enough air in when I breathe in. This started a few weeks ago, but I hadn’t really thought much of it. Over the last few days it’s got more significant and more frequent. Last night was particularly bad. I went to bed about 11.30 and was a bit uneasy then, and the nerves in my right leg were quite bad, which is an infrequent thing since increasing the gabapentin. I awoke at about 2.45, having clearly been sweating. My breathing was pretty bad, and this went on for a couple of hours. I was definitely less affected when I wasn’t laid down. I tried propping myself up in bed, and that helped the breathing, but I don’t seem to get enough support to stop it hurting my back.
Having not had any more sleep, I called the surgery and got an appointment. I had read recently that the separation of the rectus sheath (stomach muscles separating) – as mine have been for about 18 months now – can cause shortness of breath, as well as constipation. The latter might explain why my constipation hasn’t improved that much since I came off the tramadol. Anyway, I wanted to get it checked out. My blood pressure has also been high when I’ve checked it recently.
I saw a different GP today. She talked things through with me and checked my O2 sats, which seemed ok at 96%. My BP was 150/95 – around what I had been seeing at home. Having checked my family history, needless to say Dad’s heart problems triggered alarm bells, so she ordered an ECG, blood screen, chest X-ray and echocardiogram. I’m also going to have a 24 hour BP monitor fitted next week to see if my high BP is “white coat syndrome”. I do tend to take my BP at home when I feel it might be an issue, so my normal BP might not be that bad.
I went back this afternoon to have the ECG, and later in the day I got a call from the HCA to say the GP had reported the ECG is “acceptable for now”, but we will see what the other tests show, and I’m to go back for a review in early April.