Yahoo Autos Doctors dismissed a young woman's heart-pounding adrenaline attacks as anxiety. She now has a deadly tumor.
Miranda Edwards had pounding headaches and heart palpitations, but doctors told her it was anxiety.
She was finally diagnosed with a rare adrenaline-secreting tumor when she was 19 years old.
She had a heart attack, two strokes, and nearly died due to the tumor, and she's still sick today.
Growing up, Miranda Edwards said she was used to a feeling of '"impending doom" that she couldn't explain.
In her teenage years, she was often sick and had trouble sleeping at night. But she didn't think much of it until she was 19, when she started experiencing episodes of brutal headaches, heart palpitations, and vomiting all at once.
"My head felt like it was in a vise and it was being squeezed," Edwards, now 32, told Insider.
Edwards visited her family doctor and told him something was seriously wrong. She was having headaches more days than not, and they were always accompanied by flushing and sweating that took hours to go away.
However, Edwards said her doctor told her she was probably partying too much and not sleeping enough. If the episodes continued, she could come back for more blood work while she was symptomatic.
It would be the first instance in a years-long battle to get doctors to take her seriously. Meanwhile, a rare tumor was growing bigger on her adrenal gland, one of two tiny structures that sit atop the kidneys,
She would later find out that the softball-sized tumor was causing her body to produce excessive amounts of adrenaline. The headaches, palpitations, and all of her nights spent feeling "wired" were symptoms of the hormonal imbalance.
Doctors told her she was just anxious — until she had a heart attack
Edwards was frustrated when she left the doctor's office.
"I was like, 'Did you not hear what I said? I'm on the bathroom floor convulsing, with no vision, vomiting, and truly feeling like I'm going to die,'" Edwards said. "At my age, I should not have to put away three- to four-hour blocks of time in order to recover from this mystery assault."
As she continued to express concern over her symptoms, Edwards said the word "anxious" began to follow her like a scarlet letter.
Then one night, when she was 19 years old, she was hit with "horrific" chest pain while taking a bath. It turned out to be a heart attack.
Edwards stayed in the hospital for four days, and she continued to feel like her doctors thought she was being dramatic. Yet almost as soon as she was discharged, she got a call telling her she would need to be admitted again — this time to the Ottawa Heart Institute. She would stay there for two months.
