How hard is it to get a diagnosis?

• by blucherries7x89
• 2011-01-06 11:01:19
• Conditions, Meds & Tests
• 1798 views
• 3 comments

I am a 21 year old athlete (NCAA swimmer and runner) who had a pm placed in Sep '10. I first saw cardio when I was 17 due to many fainting episodes during my childhood/teenage years. I was diagnosed with vaso-vagal syncope, and put on a bcp to help with the hormonal imbalances that they thought were making it so bad (at one point i was fainting more than once a month). This helped for several years, but at 20 the fainting returned. Although this time it was quite different. I was literally just dropping to the floor and waking up. I was sent to neurology by my doctors thinking it was epilepsy. After neurology determined it was not seizures that I was having, I was sent to cardio (if it wasn't the brain it was the heart as far as they were concerned). I was placed on a 30-day event monitor. After only 2 days of having it, I had an episode, recorded it, and called it in over the phone. The event monitor company called back immediately and sent me to the ER saying I had a 13 second flatline.
I was kept in the hospital over night and a new cardiologist came in and said he was putting in a pm. It was placed, and they sent me home the next day.
Since then, I have been begging the doctors to find out what actually caused the flatline. They say it is vasovagal syncope, but the EKG I had did not look anything like an EKG for someone having a vasovagal episode. Several doctors I know have looked at it and said I threw a PVC right before the flatline and in several other places on different recordings, one has said he believes it is SSS - because there are several places on a couple of different EKGs where I have no P-waves after the suspected PVC, my pediatrician (who I do not see anymore) was talking to my mom and said she believes it is WPW (although there are no delta waves present) or an autoimmune disorder that has affected the SA node first, and the pm rep I saw before a lead revision in Nov said I had 42 PVCs between Oct and Nov, I also went to get a second opinion at Mayo Clinic and the doctor I saw said that he thought there was something else going on, but since there was a pm in place he was not going to test for anything. To me, none of the things I am being told add up. My doctors do not want to make a new diagnosis (I do not doubt the first diagnosis because all of the symptoms fit until recently, I simply think there is something else going on), and I know enough about cardio (my mom is also a doc and I am a nursing major) to know that what I saw on the EKG is not what happens during vasovagal syncope.

My major concern is the current group of doctors I am seeing are not running any tests (I have never even had a tilt-table test) yet they are saying they know nothing has changed with my heart. I am very concerned that they are missing something major - I have a brother that was born with a heart defect and a sister who is experiencing the same symptoms that I did at her age - and I cannot believe they will not even consider a different diagnosis.

Is it this difficult with doctors to get them to look at other possibilities?