I had a heart attack scare today.

My chest still hurts. I’m not sure what happened but yesterday I was burping all day but it wasn’t painful. Then I woke up in the middle of the night and my chest hurt. I assumed it was a pulled muscle and went back to sleep but then when I woke up I started getting paranoid, thinking about a friend who recently told a story of her dad ignoring a heart attack then finding out what it was years later when the doctors did an x-ray and found his heart had given up on one pathway and built a new one to replace it. And I looked up the symptoms of a heart attack and didn’t have most of them except the mysterious chest pain. But it listed lightheadedness and cold sweats, and the moment I read that–damn I am susceptible to advertising–I immediately got dizzy, cold and super sweaty. But then I willed it away, told myself it was just my imagination.
But I decided to go to the emergency room anyway. No sense stressing about it. I figured I’d make an adventure out of it. Call it a learning experience, like when you take your dog to the vet just so they can meet the vet and get acquainted so it’s less traumatizing when they actually have to go to the vet. (honestly I don’t know anyone who actually does that)
It’s funny that the drive there and back was by far, the most stressful part of the whole thing–that’s so weird, if someone asked me, “What’s the most stressful aspect of going to the hospital thinking you might be having a heart attack?” I would in complete honesty say, the drive there and back. That’s how bad it is driving in Pittsburgh for me.
I didn’t understand how the valet parking worked at St. Clair Hospital. I should have used it.
(I think also, like I have this reverse snootiness thing going on–like I’m too good for valet parking or something. Like if people see me getting valet parking they might assume I’m this rich hoity-toity asshole. I’ve been accused of being white and privileged so many times that it’s like things like valet parking and heated seats are repulsive to me because I’m scared of those people seeing me using them. It’s one of my silly quirks. I just automatically reject those things, even if they make perfect sense, as it does in this hospital just due to their parking situation.)
so I drove around and paid for parking and got all frustrated about it–it’s like, cars somehow just bring out the dark side of Kalin. But once I was in the hospital and actually talking to people, the stress went away, and I was able to look at the whole thing as just information gathering. Even if I am having a heart attack, obviously I’m not going to die from it. It’s just another plot point in my increasingly complex and beautiful life.
We all need challenges, otherwise life would suck from overwhelming boredom.
The emergency room has 2.0 stars on Google Maps, but I was actually not at all unhappy with them. I was there for like 5 hours, but toward the end I realized they had wanted to take two blood tests, one when I first came in and then one a couple hours later so they could see if anything was changing.
And almost everything was digital. I didn’t have to fill out any forms! –well one that was like three lines long at the front desk. That was kind of unbelievable. I thought all medical practices were still stuck in the 70’s and would require me to fill out actual paperwork for every visit. My new dentist the other day still made me fill out everything by hand.
And they did a chest x-ray.
In the end, they said that everything checks out. Whatever my chest pain is, it’s not immediately life threatening and it’s not a heart attack. He said I had very low risk factors because my family doesn’t have a history of heart attacks and I don’t drink or smoke tobacco–but see I used to drink and smoke tobacco for many years–but he says low risk factors does not mean risk free. There’s always still the chance so I was right for getting it checked out.
But he said I should see a regular doctor and get some more tests, like a stress test, that thing where they hook you up to all these electrodes and have you run as hard and fast as you possibly can on a treadmill until you feel like you’re gonna die.
So I suppose it could still be related to my heart, but it could be a lot of things.
It’s weird to think that I likely would have ignored the whole thing if I’d had to work today. I might never have even mentioned it to anyone and used work to just distract myself from the idea. But I’m glad I went… I think. We’ll see if I still feel that way after I get the bill.
This was good practice for my life strategies, to look at it all as an adventure, a marvelous story unfolding.