I will be 60 next month and have survived two heart attacks. I am still uncertain about how I feel in my body or about my life after experiencing another HA. I was at my mothers for Mothers Day and was excited about the outdoor umbrella I bought her. She spends too much time inside and I wanted to give her a good reason to get outside for a little fresh air. So I showed up with a bright red umbrella and a yummy salad I made to celebrate the day. But damn it, it feel apart fast. I needed to overturn the umbrella stand because it was full of sticks and rocks used to hold the too small umbrella from times past. Their stand is a half circle of cement and I didn’t for a second think I couldn’t flip it over. But that is all it took, that was the beginning of my next heart event. I immediately got dizzy and light headed and knew I needed to get down on the floor.
I left my mother on the porch and went inside to lay on the living room floor. Seriously, I was having a full body hum and got really hot. I stayed on the floor for over 30 minutes trying to regulate my breathing. No chest pain, just the tension in my body is what I remember and my mother standing over me worried. I can still hear her asking me not to have a HA on her living room floor, I was powerless over what was happening and just stayed on the floor. About 30-40 minutes later my mother offered me a baby aspirin. LIGHTBULB moment and I remembered my nitro pills I had in the car. I have a locket ring I have been carrying nitro pills in since my first HA 1/26/20, but not that day. It was the strangest walk of my life honestly, I could feel my engine chugging.
About 15 minutes after taking that pill I felt better and drove myself home from Stinson Beach. I knew I could not survive an ambulance ride in the back on Mount Tam, I get car sick really bad. Even as I type this I cannot believe how easy it was for me to drive myself home, I felt tension in my body everywhere, but none of this is new for me. My body has suffered so much, it is clearly what it knows so it got me home. I did not go to the hospital until the next morning, while getting out of the shower it was clear I was not right. I had a 98% block in my RCA and was just a moment away from another massive HA. How have I survived two like this I keep asking myself, anyone want to clue me in?
It was so very different this time at the hospital, I drove myself and walked into the Kaiser ER in Terra Linda at 6:30am. I lost memory this time, things I had done before the HA got lost during the cath procedure. But I do remember my hello to the two guys behind the desk who got up to greet me. I said “Good timing right?” to the empty waiting room. We all laughed on our way into the ER. Last time I was surrounded by 10 men all doing something to me at once, calling out across me. It is really amazing to look back, this time I remember being all worried about bothering everybody for a false alarm! I really have this little “not enough” message weaved into my being and it presents big time when ever I think I need help from others.
Of course everyone took the best care of me, it took three hours to test my heart enzymes to verify that I had indeed had another HA the day before at my mothers. I of course started to cry because now I knew I wasn’t wasting anyones time and could actually focus on me. I constantly have to remind myself that I am worth it, I am not stupid. I understand the message and yet have never been able to turn it off. The not stupid part is having the logic of the irrational thought and still not have the power to not feel the pain of it. Logic should win in my head but never.
Once it was clear what had happened it was all about keeping me stable until there was an opening in the Cath Lab in SF. Keep in mind, it is Monday at 10:00 am as I get transferred upstairs to monitor until they can ship me to the city. But there was no openings in the city and I had to wait until Wednesday at 8:00am to get into SF. There were two other people on the floor in the same place as me, we all were waiting for Wednesday morning. We were all on the edge of another HA being watched for any change that would force an earlier transfer. The next day I had a bleep on my EKG that had me in a transport to SF so I was where I needed to be if anything else happened.
The crew for my first ambulance ride were amazing, it is in moments like these that I am reminded about who I really am. It is in these said moments that I know the universe has my back! I am blessed in so many ways, I have lived in a body that was critically wounded when I was small and didn’t know it. I have looked at life from such a different view because of it and I am glad to finally understand the truth and I am glad to know everyone doesn’t feel this way in their body! I feel gratitude around this knowledge, this understanding.
I think I cried for days on end this time, the result of another heart event brings blood thinners back on board for me and they are here to stay now that I have three stents in my heart. I have a collapsed disk in my neck that needs repair and four bulging disks in my lower lumbar sending nerve pain down my legs. I think I will just leave the details of all the other shit off to the side. I cried because the need to fix me goes away when the heart screams the loudest. <3