I honest to god had this thing happen last year where I could simply touch a spot on my lower neck, about where the blood flow highway was and it would SHOOT a stabbing pain all the way down my chest to my waist. I told 3 doctors of it and it lasted a week. They all just looked at me like I was nuts. No touch-fine/normal. Touch-ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Registering a 9.1 on the richter pain scale. Went away, never came back. I to this day don't know if I had a very fucked up nerve in that one spot, a partial blockage or what the fuck was going on.
ALL OF THAT SAID. They want to split my nerves/burn them away to numb them due to the constant feeling my feet are on FIRE. Nerves are a fucked up thing man, but from what I know, nerves are pretty constant. Yes they are constantly growing and shit and some things can and will go away, but if the underlying cause is there it will continue on until treated, druged out, burned away or whatever in the hell they do now.
Now, I have seen and read articles where golfers die of heart attacks because of a pain exactly like you state. It goes untreated because in their case they assume it is muscle or nerve pain. I don't know what sort of insurance you have or out of pocket cost but if this has been going on awhile I would probably at least see a heart doctor on it and not a general. From there they may want to do an ultrasound to get a good idea of function and what is going on. If they suspect lung issues, throw in a contrast MRI as well.
Do you take any heart medications at all right now?
I take 6 for my heart with the 2 just added yesterday. I was diagnosed at 42, my father was diagnosed at 45 and my brother fell over dead at 41. So I am probably a bit paranoid on this shit, but being wrong will literally kill you.
Adding before someone says people get aches and pains all the time. When you throw in his statement about taking his breath away, as far as I know 2 things are happening. The pain is sudden and severe enough to freak out his lungs, or something is wrong between the heart and lungs. I've had both. Once when I broke some ribs and another time I had a respiratory infection both which caused sudden sharp pains preventing breathing for a second and the awesome time they found a clot fractured into 13 little clots in my lungs. *I* can tell the difference but I cannot explain that difference. It's one thing to have pains and nerves jabbing you in the virtual face, another when it stunts breathing for a moment.
Noodleface
without really knowing anything it sounds like maybe a nerve issue relating to your neck. Do you experience any numbness or tingling in your hands/fingers?
Oldbased
provides some top quality descriptions. I had a waking early morning cardiac event in my early 30's (fortunately without damage). The only way I was able to decide whether it was a stroke, clot, or just a plain old cardiac event was from his description I read here years later. I was then able to 100% match everything literally word for word with the traumatic memory I had. Even though I had woken up to it, and should have been too groggy, you never forget anything about something like that. His description of the body symptoms (especially stuff people don't typically mention, like about hearing) fit everything to a tee. They kept trying to tell me it was a clot from intracranial pressure because they really zero'd in on the hearing/vision/head thing and ignored the heart/body symptoms which I thought was ignorant (but then I realized they were going differential on the body symptoms because no damage). I was almost convinced it was a lil mini stroke afterall until I read Olebass's full description of his heart event a ways back. As silly as it sounds-- it gave me some closure on an "open case".
