It looks like lots of good people already gave you some great advice.
(and yeah, I keep telling my wife I'm the man, but she keeps not believing me! I'll point her to your post.
)
I know it can be crippling. I know all too well the methods and lengths you can go to in order to check your pulse while nobody's watching. How you can make bargains in your head that if in the next 100 beats you only have X
PVCs, then you'll stop worrying because you're fine. How you can be terrified to even leave the house for a walk - I would sometimes have my cell phone on, pre-dialed to 911, thumb on "Talk", all stuffed into my pocket, just in case.
Looking at the doors at store entrances, seeing if there was an AED sticker there. I mean all of it. I've. Been. There.
And the absolute hardest part about all of it, at least for me, is the part that needed the most fixing was the part I had the least control over: my head.
To your specific situation - you got completely screwed by a friend and lost your job in the process. That's got to add untold amounts of stress to your life, especially in this economy.
The great news? I can do 2,200
PVCs in a day standing on my head. And so can you. For some people the journey to get out of this is long, for others it's shorter. I was one of the longer ones (ten years?). Drove me crazy. I mean there were days where I literally thought I was losing my mind. And that's on top of thinking I was going to be dead soon.
No way to live.
Here's the thing - if your cardiologist, someone who sees reams and reams of ECGs every day and 10-30 patients a day, says you're in good shape? Nothing to worry about? At some point, you need to start believing in that counsel.
Sometimes that takes a huge leap of faith. Like going out for a walk, being afraid you're going to die, but doing it anyway. And then the same thing always happens. You survive the walk.
And you survive the next day. And the next walk. And after awhile, you get this
PVC issue squared away in your head. And they go away. But they never go away forever. They'll come back some other day, right after you're certain you have 'em licked. Just know that day is coming, that you'll survive that, too, and the next day will be a new day.
It can be hard as hell. But it can be done.
Good luck to you, Justin.
Jeff