I've got what seems like a normal chest cold in some ways: slightly elevated temperature, sore throat, painful tightness in chest, hacking cough, extreme fatigue, headache, sinus congestion, laryngitis, pains in joints and back, dehydration, etc. At first, the only weird thing about it was that it came on really slowly, and made me feel more light-headed, tired, and short of breath than a normal cold.

But now I'm having attacks of really unpleasant heart palpitations that come and go. When my heart is acting like that, every 30 to 60 seconds, I get this weird sticky feeling like the valve gets stuck closed. Then it doesn't beat for a few seconds and I can feel pressure building up in my chest and my head, combined with a light-headed feeling. Then a sharp pain radiates to the top of my head, giving me an intense headache on the right side. And as this goes on I feel increasingly dizzy and delirious. To the point where I basically pass out.

Normally, I'd go to the doctor, but I forgot to buy travel insurance before I left. And because the symptoms wax and wane sporadically, they probably wouldn't be able to tell what's wrong. I might spend $100 just to get one of those, "You're fine. It's all in your head," lectures. I hope I'm ok. When it gets bad, I feel l'm dying. Oh, and my digestive system is fucked too. My appetite is pretty much gone. When I do eat, my body can't handle it.

It reminds me of the 2 times that I've had pneumonia, but with pneumonia, I think always had a fever and more severe joint pains. Uh, when it got bad enough that I went to the doctor, that is.

I would say it is most likely just a cold/flu-like virus with the only difference being that it is from a part of the world you have no immunity too. It is one of the aspects of living abroad no one ever brings up, but can effect people pretty severely sometimes.

I was thinking the same thing. Either that or maybe I have a heart condition that was asymptomatic before but has gradually been getting worse and has been made slightly symptomatic by this cold. A lot of people have heart conditions that produce no symptoms during the first few decades of life, if at all. My grandfather had been diagnosed with some mostly-benign genetic heart condition a few years before he was killed in a plane crash.