I said I'd make another longer post about it and here it is.

From: https://katricemetaluna.tumblr.com/.....4/heart-attack

About nine days ago now, the Thursday before this last one, I’d noticed it was hurting the breathe. I thought I was getting sick with the flu or something. By the next day, I was feeling myself get a lot more tired a lot more quickly. By that weekend, I was so tired I couldn’t really do much of anything. I mostly just sat and played Tropico 5 (when I wasn’t sleeping, ‘cause I slept a lot), because you know, I like city builders. They can be soothing… some of the time.

On Monday I felt OK to go to work but I was still feeling tired and it still hurt to breathe. I was thinking maybe soon I’d be over whatever was making me sick. On Tuesday I decided not to go to work and did a few of my more crucial work tasks from home because that’s possible for me. Still hurt to breathe. Exerting myself in the slightest made me feel real tired really fast.

That evening I played some more Tropico 5, and the game being what it is, it threw my plans for a glorious tropican island nation with a general revolt. Then another one. And another one. And another one. I grumbled and I got super upset at the game and was getting ready to lay down some serious shit and whatever…

Except I couldn’t. I felt pain in my chest and my back. Pain in my arms. For a time I even felt it in my teeth. These weren’t sharp pains but it was ongoing and it felt like I was aching all over. I couldn’t even stand to look at my screen anymore so I just switched that off and got into my bed. I thought maybe if I could just rest for a while then it would subside.

The pain kinda did subside after a little while, residing mostly in my chest and my left elbow and wrist. By then I was in full-on anxiety mode and that just made things worse. I’m not certain what prompted me to call my sister on my phone, but I did and I must’ve sounded really really bad, because she talked me into letting her take me to the ER.

I got lots of tests at the ER, and they gave me an Aspirin. At the time I was entirely unsure why. Eventually they told me they were certain I’d suffered a heart attack and I was just like… what, really? It didn’t make sense to me. Surely something else was going on. My insurance wanted me transferred to a different facility so I figured I’d learn more once that happened. By then all the pain and tiredness I’d been feeling had subsided.

The doctors at the hospital examined my heart in several different ways, and it showed up as being just fine in all of them. Yet my bloodwork was telling them a different story so they were suspicious that something was up and they needed to get to the bottom of it. An angiogram showed that my carotid artery is slightly blocked. Somewhere around 25%, they said. My heart must’ve spazzed at that. Not sure why this never happened before? I don’t know.

They decided the best way to go was to medicate me as if I’d had a full-on heart attack, and that I should undergo what they call a “lifestyle change”. Which means eating a hell of a lot less junk and maintaining some moderate exercise. And that’s where I am right now. I got out of the hospital yesterday afternoon and I’m home again. I’m nervous, anxious and gun shy. I’m afraid the exact same thing is gonna happen again even though I’m taking many pills now and not eating any junk. I’m pretty sure I know what I have to do but that doesn’t help me feel any less lost.

That’s pretty much it. I just needed to type this up somewhere.