Posted on 01/30/2019 3:26:42 PM PST by Sarcasm Factory
I should have known this was coming sooner or later, given my unhealthy living style and other health risk factors, but it did come, quietly on padded feet in the hushed hours of early morning.
I had a silent heart attack.
I woke up to take a piss but was unable then to fall back asleep. I kept waking up again to gasp for breath, which was weird. After perhaps thirty minutes of this, I gave up and arose to poke at the Internet for clues. Carbon monoxide poisoning was a possible cause, but then why were alarms not ringing all over the apartment building?
The symptoms — gasping for breath, a rubber heart slamming around erratically for far longer than usual with a known heart condition, and a mild but oddly disproportionate nausea — increased to a clammy, cold sweat.
Okay. I try not to be an idiot. The Mayo clinic and other websites described this as indicative of a so-called silent heart attack.
I took the easy way out. I gobbled down four baby aspirin for a total of about 320 milligrams of this cheap, off-the-shelf clot-buster drug. Then I waited. Hospitals scare me — too many people go into them for one problem and end up acquiring other serious problems, most notably hospital-borne diseases.
The symptoms worsened, stabilized, and faded away. I was not happy but at least relieved. I need to lose a lot of weight right now and to eat way more healthy, beneficial, and disgusting cruciferous vegetables. Happy, happy, joy, joy. At least I already like steamed broccoli.
I'm alive and not quietly rotting away until the neighbors complain of a terrible smell from my apartment. This is good news. I'm not complaining.
That's my little story for the day. It is to be hoped it didn't bore you. Be of good cheer!
This is not the place for medical advice—call the NOW!!!
That's good advice about avoiding coughing folks and kids with bad hygiene habits. I personally wash my hands a lot already. ^^;
BTW, don’t ever stop your Prilosec or other PPI abruptly —you will have a recurrence maybe worse than the original attack. I tried to do that and ended up on my hands and knees in the Wal-Mart parking lot - drooling on the pavement. Then the Frito-Lay delivery driver stopped to see what was wrong, thinking I was having a heart attack — fooled him, too.
Of course doctors are very necessary and will be able to assess the state of your overall health but don't look for them to prescribe a ketogenic diet. That decision you will have to make on your own and I suspect you have already done the research.
My doctor would never recommend such a diet to me but after losing over 100 pounds on such a diet, he was very impressed to see how improved my health was overall. So his only concession was "keep doing what you're doing."
Nausea and clammy cold sweat are usually the tipoffs.....
And my wife died in September because she was afraid of mammograms and needles. In the case of a person who has severe fears or aversions a family member should inform the medical providers of this. In most cases they can arrange for sedation and other special handling to get the tests accomplished. I would have done this myself but my wife didn’t have any severe symptoms until July and by then it was too late.
A couple of years back I had a nagging cough. I couldn’t go to sleep. It felt like post nasal drip.
I took Flonase...nothing. Nyquil to knock me out, but it didn’t work.
At 6:30am I posted on Facebook that I had had a terrible nights sleep because of a cough. A friend of mine who is COO of one of the larger healthcare providers called me to make sure I went to the emergency room. I went, reluctantly.
The doctor first told me I had bronchitis, then a nurse made him reexamine me (she didn’t like the sound of my breathing). They X-rayed me and said I had pneumonia and they were checking me in.
Two days later my blood oxygen dropped drastically while I walked across my room to go to the bathroom. They did a contrasting dye CT scan and found I was in the middle of a double pulmonary embolism. I was on the verge of death and didn’t know it.
Three years later and everything is fine. I do have some decreased lung capacity, but who wants to play the trumpet anyway.
Moral of the story...GET TO THE HOSPITAL! Since it is no longer critical GET TO A CARDIOLOGIST!
When you get on a daily exercise routine and shedding of some pounds you can eat some delicious bread within calorie limits.
“The symptoms — gasping for breath, a rubber heart slamming around erratically for far longer than usual with a known heart condition, and a mild but oddly disproportionate nausea — increased to a clammy, cold sweat.”
it’s POSSIBLE that this is simply sleep myoclonus ...
you might also have obstructive sleep apnea ...
but if not, then you have unstable angina with atypical symptoms (which aren’t really all that atypical), where said unstable angina is an early warning sign of an incipient heart attack ...
btw, baby aspirin is NOT a “clot buster”, that is, it won’t reduce the size of an existing clot ... all aspirin does is help disable some of your platelets, making them less likely to attach themselves to an existing clot.
Bottom line: Make an appointment TOMORROW with a cardiologist, AND if you get any more symptoms, get to an ER pronto ... you would be behaving unbelievably foolish not to heed this advice ...
If it’s not your heart, then you STILL need to be checked for obstructive sleep apnea given you weight, and if you have it, you’ll wind up using a CPAP ...
OSA itself puts a major stain on the heart, lungs and brain and is cause of high blood pressure, as is overweight, which by itself puts a huge strain on the heart, and generally leads to Type II diabetes, which itself is a major factor leading to heart attacks ..
Yes! Get your heart And your soul in order...we all should do that...and remember; we NEED you to be there for the 2020 election, too!
You know that you can lose all the weight you want, but you still have a blockage. It may be a simple stint. It may be 3 blocked arteries and you were given fare warning before signing off....for good. If you refuse to take action, at least plaease accept Christ into your life if you haven’t already. Go and get yourself checked out. Don’t be scared, but be prepared! Good luck!
I've had chronic bronchitis and pneumonia myself. Your advice to see a cardiologist is good! ^_^
Roger that. I didn’t take that good care of myself when it mattered most. Now I’m 55, and I’m a veg. LOLOL!
NSAIDS by any other name still have aspirin in them, which I can’t take because my platelet count is so low, I might bleed out. I’m kinda effed in the OTC headache relief dept. LOL
I got a free! recumbent exercise bike off of the Facebook marketplace before Thanksgiving. I have worked my way up to 2 30 minutes of 6 miles each (12 per day) hand have lost about 20 lbs with no other changes.
My knees are shot so walking doesn’t really work for me, they get really stiff and sore, but cycling doesn’t bother them at all.
I have scored several nice free! items off of the FB marketplace including a nearly new and unused recliner that my husband loves and a huge, and I mean freaking huge 10ft x 7ft solid wood wall unit entertainment center from the 60’s that we put in the shop for storage.
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