Susan: Heart transplant offered Susan an exciting opportunity to regain her independence. Three weeks after the surgery, she already felt stronger than she had for years.
But the first time that she had walked upstairs alone, she thought that her heart was going to pound out of her chest. She was terrified. The team prescribed a drug for what they recognized to be an irregular heart rhythm. But the problem continued. It occurred twice when she was walking alone outside the hospital. This frightened her most. "What if I can not get to help in time," Susan worried. More tests found nothing wrong with her heart. The irregular rhythm was no longer present.
At their monthly support group, Susan talked about her frustration with these symptoms. To her surprise, another recipient said that he had experienced a similar problem. After recovering from an episode of rejection, he had tightness in his chest whenever he left the hospital. Again, all of the tests were perfectly normal.
Eventually, he had figured out that the rejection episode had frightened him deeply. It terrified him that something might be wrong with his new heart. But he had learned from reading that stress could sometimes cause physical symptoms like his. After he learned to better reassure and calm himself, the problem eventually disappeared. He suggested that Susan might deal with her symptoms similarly.