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Tokra, you have an awesome testimony! Thank you for sharing that with everyone.

I wish I had a nickel for every patient who drove himself/herself to the hospital when they experienced the symptoms you have described. I'd be living on my own private island in French Polynesia right now.

Note to all and sundry: if you are having chest pain, nausea, sweating, weakness, palpitations, or shortness of breath- or any combination of one or more of those symptoms- CALL 911. DO NOT DRIVE YOURSELF TO THE HOSPITAL.

This may seem silly to someone who only lives five or ten minutes away from a hospital. But if you have those symptoms, it indicates that your heart is already being starved of oxygen (Myocardial Ischemia). If your heart is ischemic, you may be only seconds away from that heart muscle actually dying (Myocardial Infarct).

Not minutes, people; seconds. All it takes to convert your chest pain from ischemia to infarct is a shift of that clot by a distance that could fit easily on the head of a pin.

If that happens while you are driving yourself to the ER, you will not only be hurting yourself. You will also harm anyone standing in the path of your vehicle as you lose control. It's happened. I encountered such a person on one of my days off when he rear-ended me at an intersection. I got out to give him a piece of my mind and ended up performing CPR. On my day off. Don't drive yourself!

And don't get a friend or loved one to drive you, either. You may avoid hitting another car when your heart stops, but your friend will be a little distracted by your agonal breathing and will have to live with the guilt forever. Don't do that to your friend or loved one.

Medic units are trained to give care within minutes of the call and to transport you to the ER safely, continuing progressive care for you all the way there. They exist for this reason. USE THEM.

Oh, and two more good reasons to let EMS take you to my ER:

1: The Medic Unit doesn't get caught at red lights;

2: Traffic will get out of the way of the Medic Unit.

So you can travel quickly to the ER while passing the corpses who chose to drive themselves and died on the way.