It Wasn't a Heart Attack
Over a week ago (8–9 August, to be precise), I spent the night in the hospital, finding out what the vague "observation and test" might mean in my case.
For a couple of days I'd been having some vague, not terribly threatening sounding symptoms, mainly a persistent feeling of light-headedness–not dizziness, but more a tendency towards feeling somewhat faint, as though lying down might be more comfortable than standing. This was accompanied by a light ache in my jaw / throat area. My throat felt a bit constricted and my appetite was suppressed.
The quick summary is that I felt somewhat odd, in ways that I don't normally feel, and it had persisted pretty much for a good part of Friday and most of Saturday. These vague symptoms are all things that, normally, would add up to nothing much unless one happened to have a history of heart disease and diabetes.
Of course, I have had a heart attack and I am diabetic. In that case, taken together, they might indicate a quiet sort of heart attack. That thought started making me feel anxious and so we visited the emergency room about 8pm on the Saturday evening.
Have you ever noticed that everyone who greets you at the ER says "Hi, how are you?" I want someone to yell "Not well–I'm in the emergency room, after all!", but everyone says "oh, fine." I was gratified that reporting symptoms of a possible heart attack got me some very swift attention, at least until it seemed that I might not be in extreme need.
Immediate signs said it didn't look like a heart attack. I was very interested to learn that a blood test for specific enzymes produced during an infarction showed nothing, where we certainly would have expected something after a day's worth of symptoms. Nitroglycerin tablets had some effect, but not profoundly so since there seemed to be no angina present.
I was checked in for overnight "observation and testing" at about 2am. Fortunately we knew that would be happening so Isaac got to go home about 12:30, good since he needed to work all morning Sunday, being a church musician.
I had a good, late night chat with my "observation unit" nurse, Carol. I even got a little sleep before being awakened at 7:30 to say that we wouldn't do the stress test yet because there was something a little "funny" about my EKG.
We did more EKGs and then found from my cardiology records that one should expect my EKG to look a little "funny". So there. I hate being entirely normal.
So we did the nuclear stress test, a thing far from the top of my list of fun medical tests. (I much prefer a sedate echocardiogram.) This was the version using the treadmill, and I do believe it was the first time I'd done this test and got all the way to my target heart-rate (of 170) without passing out or getting sick. Progress!
It was a test worth doing because it had been a couple of years since my last one, but it also suggested that whatever was going on, it was not cardiac related. Results were looked at, discussed, worked over, and all decided that I could go home that afternoon. Isaac and our friend Richard arrived about 2 or so, and we left about 3, ably discharged by my fun day-nurse, whose name escapes me at the moment.
Such trips are not typically described as fun, but this one I found about as not unpleasant as it could get. The facility was at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis, MD, and this time at least I found all the staff I encountered to be friendly, attentive, and caring. I thank them for that.
Of course, there's still the problem of the mysterious symptoms, which haven't disappeared entirely but haven't been as persistent since. We're pretty certain that it's not a heart event, but it will take a little more investigate to figure out what's not quite right and why I feel a little odd. I'm hoping for some clever ideas soon.
One Response
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Leave a Reply
To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.
I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Tuesday, 18 August 2009 at 20.40
Permalink
Eeeeek! Scary stuff, for sure. 1) I am glad you are doing OK (if not supremely well). 2) I am glad you had the sense to go check it out. 3) the medical community thanks you for participating in its economic stimulus program.
Truly, I'm glad you're OK. It is serious stuff.