My ER Adventure…

Yesterday started out like any other day. I woke up, had my coffee, got the boys off to school, and went on about my business as usual. I really did feel fine. I had had a headache for about a day that I just couldn’t get rid of but it didn’t strike me as odd as it really wasn’t a BAD headache….just a dull one.

About  1:30 or so I was walking from my Laundry room to my Living room with a basket of laundry and got REALLY dizzy and nauseated and then everything went black. We’re talking llights went out and nobody was home and I hit the floor like a ton of bricks. I have no idea how long I was out, but I came to on the floor half on top of the laundry basket(yeah I’m gonna need a new one of those now.) and half on the floor. My heart was RACING so fast I literally thought I was dying. I couldn’t see straight because my vision was flipping like a TV that had lost it’s horizontal hold, and I literally had NO strength to move myself off of the basket. My whole body had this weird pins and needles sensation, and felt confused and spacy. I was literally scared to death. I knew something was VERY wrong.

Thankfully, I carry my cell phone with me at all times. Mainly because of my twitter and facebook obsession, but also because I just like to have it with me. You never know what can happen and I’m so glad I do that now.

After a few moments I realized I could move my arms and reached into the basket I was on top of for my cell phone, rolled myself off of the basket flat onto the floor, and punched a button on the phone to activate the screen. This is where I realized that I still couldn’t see well enough to actually dial the phone, and my hands were shaking so bad I was close to dropping it. Then I remembered I had last called my husband and all I had to do to call him again was push the talk button twice. I knew where that button was and punched it twice.

When he answered I said to him..” You need to come home right now” but it came out more like garbled gibberish. He asked me what was wrong…more garbled slurred gibberish and he said he was on his way and to stay put. ( yeah I don’t think that was going to be an issue.)

It seemed like an eternity before he came busting through the door. Somehow between our phone call and him arriving I  managed to crawl/drag myself onto the sofa which was where he found me. By this time my heart had slowed down some but I still felt super dizzy and nauseated and my vision was STILL not cooperating with me, and my motor skills were like that of a 6 month old.  He KNEW as soon as he saw me that I needed to get checked out, but stupid me I wanted to argue.

“Nah, it’ll pass and I’ll be fine in a few minutes” Yeah right…

He got me up and helped me to the truck and we headed to the ER.

There were several thoughts that went through my head on the way there..I won’t share them all with you just the funniest, because even in all of what was going on at least I didn’t lose my sense of humour.

“Thank God I have on clean underwear today.”
“Shit! Isn’t tonight LOST night?” (It wasn’t it was a rerun..)

Once we got to the ER I was already feeling somewhat better. Heart rate had slowed down some, I could form complete sentences, and some of my motor skills were returning. I still had that strange pins and needles feeling and was very shaky, and dizzy and nauseated and generally felt like shit but at least at that point I wasn’t feeling so “on the verge of death”.

They said my heart rate was elevated as was my blood pressure. Not SCARY elevated but definitely not in the “normal” range. Blood sugar was also slightly elevated. EKG was fairly normal, but there were some “odd” spikes that indicated Premature Ventricular Contractions. Blood work was fairly normal. Cardiac Enzyme test was slightly elevated which indicated that there had definitely been a “Cardiac Event.”

Cat scan of my brain was normal. (Yes there was one in there!! I had always wondered..) They were concerned that I had had another TIA though. I had one several months ago and once you’ve had one there’s always a risk of more to follow. (For those of you who don’t know TIA is Transient Ischemic Attack which is basically a mini- stroke.) There wasn’t any real evidence of this on the Cat scan but all of the symptoms fit.

After 4 hours in the ER having all of those tests done I really felt totally normal and everything had stabilized so they had no choice but to send me on home.

I was instructed to follow up with a Cardiologist as well as a Neurologist. I was also told NOT to drive a car or exercise until I had done so.

I’m not sure which one of those orders I’m more pissed about.

Now Bart has to take off work early every day to get the kids from school until I’m cleared to drive a car again. AND I can’t exercise!!

I’ll gladly follow doctors orders though. I certainly wouldn’t want to have another one of these spells behind the wheel of an automobile at all. Especially not with the kids in the vehicle with me.

They also told me that if ANYTHING like this happens again instead of calling Bart I need to call 911. ( I really WOULD have called 911 if I could have seen the buttons or worked the phone properly it just wasn’t possible.)The main reason for this is they would have had a cardiac monitor on me MUCH sooner and probably caught more of the “event” as it happened. Also they could have documented more of the symptoms sooner and maybe had a clearer diagnosis.

The doctor told me that if you push as many buttons as you can on your cell phone at once it will automatically dial 911. I never knew this. Might be good information for you guys to have. I haven’t tried it yet as I really don’t want an ambulance showing up here unless I need it.

Today I’m trying to just hang out and not do much. I have noticed that any time I get the tiniest bit anxious I get flutters so I’m trying to stay calm.

I have to call the Cardiologist to schedule some more testing today. They want me to have an Echocardiogram, Holter Monitoring, and a Stress Test done ASAP.  At some point I’ll need to follow up with Neurology and get an MRI but with no insurance I’m definitely going to focus more on the whole cardiology thing first. I don’t even want to think about how much all of these tests are going to cost right now.

So- There’s my adventure….

Thank you to everyone who sent me tweets, direct messages and emails, and left me comments of concern. It made me feel a little less “alone” going through all of that.

I’ll keep everyone updated as to what I find out. I’m off to the sofa. I think I can finish season 3 of Battlestar Galactica today if I try really hard..

~ by catwmn on March 12, 2009.