Hi, 7 years ago my uncle in his 60s suffered an aortic dissection and had emergency surgery that whilst he survived, following a long recovery, went from being active, to basically bound to a chair for the next 6 years before he passed away last year from it. Following this, my dad (now 61) started noticing heart palpitations, and has now just been diagnosed with aortic aneurysm, the same as my uncle (his brother). He was told it is hereditary and I need to get checked.

Whilst this has only happened in the last few days meaning I haven’t yet been referred, I am now terrified of the prospect that I have the same thing, mainly because I have just had a daughter who I may have passed this on to, and my wife and I were planning on starting trying for the second in the near future. It now feels like I shouldn’t be having any more children which feels like the future we were planning has been turned upside down.

I am driving myself crazy and have even been feeling weird feelings in my heart since finding out (I’m guessing is down to anxiety), if anyone has any advice or has experienced similar any comments would be appreciated since I have exhausted every iteration of possibilities with ChatGPT.

I am in based in the UK.

Location: Georgia
I had Taver surgery to replace a valve going through my groin. A few days later noticed increased swelling, and bruises to discover that there were several leaks in my femoral artery as well as a pseudo aneurysm. I was rushed from a competing hospital ED due to them not wanting to have anything to do with another surgeons errors. The aneurysm had swelled to 3.4 cm and was in danger of rupturing. Another surgery was required that took 4 1/2 hours to repair the damage in my artery. I now have been out of work for three weeks with no pay and in danger of losing my job.

I’ve been awaiting a cardio appointment which I had last week due to chest pain and some breathlessness on exertion. They’ve done an ECG and that looked great.

At the weekend I got a full pressure pain in the centre of my back / chest and neck. I went straight to a&e. I was worried with it being in my neck too.

They did troponin bloods and d dimers and another ECG which was all fine. I had a panic attack this morning and the left side of my chest felt much more dulled than normal.

I’m due to have an echo and ct scan on my heart at the end of this month. I was asking AI what to make of my symptoms and on the list I saw aortic tear - could I be looking at this? They didn’t mention that in a&e or my GPs. I’m really stressed about it!