mito said:
did you notice something was going wrong before the heart attack? (chest, limb and stomach pains)
I am asking you these personal questions because the subject is very pertinent.
Oh, yeah. I had a ton of warning signs in hindsight. Tinglingly/numbness at the extremeties, like when you're foot falls asleep or something how it feels all tingly when the feelings coming back? I'd get that feeling in my fingers & toes sometimes for no reason. Super-low energy, shortness of breath after limited physical activity, etc.
The instigating factor was teaching my kids to ride backs, I ended up running alongside their bikes for about a mile. My freaking chest HURT about halfway thru, and I kept going anyways like an idiot.
When I got home it still hurt, so I had a few smokes to try and relax and calm down....then I was squirming around on the computer room floor in pain trying to make the cramp in my chest go away and every breath felt like a bazillion needles were piercing my lungs. (Like in winter on a
really cold day, but without the cold)
I decided that mebbe a bit of a lie down would help so I crawled off to bed, but my wife was a tad concerned that I wouldn't wake up if I went to sleep so was all insistant that we call an ambulance.
We did, the really bad part of the heart attack hit about the same time the ambulance got here (probably because I insisted on walking out myself, I did NOT want to be wheeled out in front of my kids on a stretcher...it'd scare 'em) and the nice EMT hit the back of my tongue with the magical nitroglycerine spray just about as the heart attack really hit.
I think it saved my life.
The rest was pretty uneventful. A lot of waiting around in an emergency room, going to a hospital room, tests, then the angioplasti. (It actually was just going to be an exam, but since they went in and found the blockage they fixed it whilst everything was all set-up....it HURTS when they inflate that damned balloon) A close call for sure, but I got really lucky and walked away from it.
All in all it was a really crappy way to spend me and my wife's 8th anniversary.
