Originally Posted by birdgirl73
Sweetheart, the best advice I can give you is to go have yourself checked. I've told you this before. What you need is an echocardiogram, which'll look at your heart's structure and rhythm at the same time--while it's beating and you're comfortably resting on a table. Lots of people have heart murmurs. Most of those are benign and don't cause any trouble. You can live to be 110 with most heart murmurs. An echocardiogram isn't painful or scary in any way. They just have you open up your shirt and they rub a little device over your chest that bounces sound waves off your heart. I personally have had lots of these tests and downright enjoy them, but part of that is because the echo tech at my heart doc's office is a very handsome young gentleman.
As far as having something fatal, here's the thing with that. If you did have a deadly heart or vascular problem, you wouldn't have it on your mind for long. You'd fall over and die. That's why the "I don't wanna worry about it" reason doesn't fly very far. Would you rather be dead? No, of course not. Would you really rather bury your head in the sand instead of facing it like a man and finding out the very likely reassuring news that it's nothing? You're smart and mature enough to know the answer there is no, too.
That's why I always urge folks to go have themselves checked, and while I know I sometimes simply reassure you because you are a little bit neurotic (in a completely charming way, of course) about health symptoms, you're the type of patient who'll go in and feel a thousand times better once you've heard officially that you're fine. And in the highly unlikely event that you weren't fine, I promise you you'd survive whatever the problem was. Keep in mind here that you're a young man of color. People of color have more trouble with high BP, heart disease, and strokes than other races, and do you know why that is? Because they don't get seen until problems have advanced to the point where they're far sicker than they have to be. They put it off, in other words, and that's understandable because, of course, insurance and money get in the way.
Orangeman, you're like an online son to me. I mean that. I think the world of you. And that's why I want you to buck up and tell your mom or your grandma that you want to go to the doctor. If you lived down here in the Dallas area, I'd pick you up myself and take you to see my husband, then we'd take you out to eat something better than McDonald's once you were through at the office. Then I'd slap your sweet face, tell you to mind your manners, which you generally do anyway, and send you on your merry way.
The guys here are right. It could also be acid reflux, which is treatable. It could be a leaky heart valve, also treatable. It could be lots of other things. None of which anyone with any sense would try to diagnose over an online cannabis forum. At least think about making an appointment, OK? It's time for you to have this weight off your mind. Once this heart thing is settled for good, I promise you will want to hug my neck you'll be so relieved.