Heart aches

It started yesterday afternoon. When we got back from St. Anthony Falls and a very late lunch, I felt like I was coming down with something. My nose was running and I had a slight fever. I took Mommy to the airport and went back home. In the evening, I started feeling something in my left chest. Pain. Very quick. Less than a second. Then it's gone. Sometimes, it went down to my left elbow. Sometimes, it felt like a stake driving from the front to my shoulder blade. Sometimes, it started at the shoulder blade. Sometimes, it's a sharp pain. Sometimes, it's a dull pain.

I didn't worry about it at the start. But when it started happening more often, I looked up the the symptoms for a heart attack online. I knew the symptoms were different in women. And I had a few of them. I went to bed; I figured I was just exhausted since it was already after 2am. My sister had called to say that my mom had arrived in SFO safely. But it happened again twice. I called 911.

I said I think I'm having a heart attack but I'm not sure. The pain comes and goes. The operator said they would send the paramedics. A fire truck came, followed by an ambulance.

A woman from the fire truck was incredulous that I was the patient. But she directed me to the ambulance, where the paramedics attached some wires on me, started an IV, gave me four aspirins and a spray of nitroglycerin, and some oxygen. Then they took me to the ER.

Long story short, after four hours at the ER, my EKG is fine, my blood tests are fine, my X-rays are fine. I got a few hours of sleep and the shooting pain got fewer and more dull. My fever seems to be gone. The doctor in the ER thinks it's just muscle pain from my flu. But he talked to a doctor on call from the Women's Heart Clinic before giving me the okay to go home. I was given instructions to rest, take ibuprofen for the pain, and follow up with my physician tomorrow.

Sometimes I wonder. When I had a spell of irregular heartbeat several years ago, they couldn't find anything wrong either. Am I getting psychosomatic? Or was it sympathetic pain (my mom is getting an angioplasty on Tuesday)? Did I panic too soon? Should I have waited until morning to see to see if the symptoms would disappear? Or did the aspirin and nitroglycerin do the trick?