How should I use this blog? Sometimes I want to say more than can be said in my monthly reading diary, so I’ve decided to resume writing more general articles here. After all, what is a blog if not a place to share our hearts with our readers?
Linda Jo Martin – May 2023
People go to the internet to find specific information. We want to get answers to our questions.
Medical Semi-Emergency
Last night my question was about what the symptoms of a heart attack are, for women. I’ve looked for this information before so I already knew women’s symptoms are different than men’s. I got some helpful advice from the American Heart Association website.
It was an immediate need! You see, I woke up from a cat nap in my easy chair around 11:30pm and there was pain in my chest area. It wasn’t extreme pain, but was constant pain of a tolerable degree, maybe a five on a scale from one to ten. It wasn’t nearly as bad as childbirth, for example.
I tried to lie down on my bed hoping that would help the pain go away but it didn’t. Instead I started feeling nauseous so I couldn’t stay lying down even though I was otherwise tired enough to go to sleep. So I checked the symptoms again – sure enough, one of the symptoms was feeling nauseous.
Now, if I lived in town I would have driven to the hospital emergency room to get this all checked out, but I live far from there – about 70 miles away on a winding river road through the hills, far into the forest. So I wondered what the right thing to do was. That’s when I decided to check my blood pressure and it was higher than I’d ever seen it before: 212/118.
I checked the internet again and saw that high blood pressure readings often accompany heart attacks! I decided to take a shower in case I had to go to the hospital 70 miles away. I thought if I still felt bad after the shower I’d do something about it.
So I phoned my daughter next door – by now it was almost 1am but I knew she’d still be awake. Next thing I knew my granddaughter was at my door hysterical thinking I was going to die. I didn’t think I would die, but it was time to get some medical advice so I called the advice nurse. I was put on hold and nobody ever answered. So the only other thing to do was call 911 and wake up the local ambulance crew in the middle of the night. That was obviously my last choice of all available options! (I know, people say I should have done that first.)
Anyhow, here it was nearly 2am and I woke up two of my neighbors and a woman who lives nearby but I know not where. They came with the town ambulance and I lay down in there on the stretcher thing, and got hooked up to a heart monitor. Plus they took some blood pressure readings that were high but not as high as what I got earlier.
The heart monitor readings showed I wasn’t having a heart attack, but just some kind of arrhythmia. I got the choice of being driven out to the hospital (70 miles each way, for them) or staying home. I chose to stay home. One main reason was that when a person from this remote rural forest town is taken in the ambulance to the hospital there is no way to get back. One must then convince some nice neighbor or relative to drive all the way out to the hospital to get them and drive them home. That’s so inconvenient! I wonder what a taxi would cost.
The ambulance crew was very professional and helpful. It is great they could check my heart and get a printout showing exactly what was going on. I was very happy with the service, just sorry it happened at 2am robbing these nice volunteers from their sleep. Grrr. Why me?
The pain in my chest persisted but wasn’t so severe by this time. I took two extra high blood pressure pills and went to bed. When I woke up at 7am to water my plants outside, the pain was gone. Then I fell asleep again until 9:55 when I woke up to go to church. I felt fine for church, though just a little bit weaker than normal. Being 70 this year is so much fun, but there are challenges.
Journaling June
Anyhow, what brings this on? ie: not the heart rhythm problem, but the blog writing. Well, this is JUNE and I’m calling it JOURNALING JUNE. Now I know the word JOURNALING has been appropriated by people who create art in notebooks. I like that kind of journaling and have done some myself – but for me, journaling has always referred to a plain paper notebook writing experience, and that’s the kind of journaling I want to do during June. Perhaps if I do well this month at bringing back my daily notebook habit I’ll make it more of a “thing” next year asking others to journal with me. This is all part of my YouTube channel rebranding as mentioned previously on my Booktube channel.
A Favorite Video Today
This video is pretty awesome.
Have a great day! (or evening, night, whatever!)
Glad you got it checked out! Interesting story, thanks. I didn’t know that symptoms for women are different.
Yes, women have some strange heart attack symptoms, with the pain sometimes being in their arms or back!