So I didn't have a Heart Attack or 2?

So here is how a stress test works. I got an EKG and they took more blood to check blood oxygen levels. Mine were still fine.

Because I showed up for this party in pink striped jammies, turquoise tank top and leather sandals, my wardrobe needed augmentation. cute top was replaced with non-descript hospital gown and lovely blue socks with rubbery grip stuff on the tops and bottoms. It's those little sock things I wore on the, soon to be mentioned, tread mill.

They moved me into a cardiac area. I should mention by now, my chest pains were minimal but my headache was quite noticable. And my blood pressure was still too high. Mike injected radioactive isotopes into my IV. I asked him, if I sneezed, would I blow up. He just looked at me. I explained it was on an old school Twilight Zone episode, from when I was a kid, or a 1950's movie. He was unmoved.

Then he put me into a Gamma Ray Transmorger or something like that. Took s'more pictures of my chest. After that tedious moment in my life, laying on something the width of a butter knife, he wheeled me into the stress test room. I wasn't allowed to walk anywhere but to the bathroom. Apparently going potty posed no risk to my heart.

In my non-cute hospital socks I did 12% grade fast walking at 2.5 mph for 10 minutes getting my heart rate up to 160. Now this was awesome! Seriously! It was the highlight of my weekend adventure because I have not been able to exercise like that for nearly 6 years! A car wreck and subsequent knee injury has prevented it. I did 3 micro-current treatments on each knee 2 months ago and they have been improving. This experience showed me I could get back to it! Yay! (Silver lining.)

Another trip to the Gamma Ray Transmorger and I was back to my observation room, where Adam was sucking on a delicious smelling coffee drink from Starbucks.

I only had to wait about an hour for my Egyptian cardiologist to tell the new doc, on shift that my heart was absolutely fine but I needed blood pressure medication. Fine. I did not have 1 or 2 heart attacts the night before. Yay! Good to know. This doctor recommended I take Kapadex for acid reflux and go get checked out by an MD, a surgeon to see if my gall bladder needs evicted and a gastroentomologist or something to see if my esophagus is okay. Huh..

Someone is going to have to do a lot of talking to get me on blood pressure medication. This is the 3rd time my blood pressure has jacked up like this. Normally my blood pressure is low. If I go use medication how will I ever know what is causing this to happen? What if it is something I should be watching and changing my diet or something for? How will I know. So I start somewhere. I pulled up akaline foods off of Google. If I stop eating acidic foods, perhaps my innards will calm the heck down. I'll have less discomfort and my blood pressure will stay where it should. And if I start walking on my treadmill at home I will drop a few pounds raising my level of health that way.

And through this all, I'm fairly sure my listening to The Listening Program helped my brain filter all this confusing activity and handle the weekend adventures with some intelligence and lack of out of balance emotion. I know I need to do something different to improve my health. I also know it has to make sense and not be some medical protocol without reason and logic behind it.

Heart attack protocols

My son, Adam drove me to the hospital late at night. No one asked us why we were there for 25 minutes. If I had really been worried I would have put up a stink. They took my info and description of what was happening and moved me right into the cardiac bay in the ER.

I was having chest pains that went all the way through to my back and radiated across the middle of my torso, under my chest. Then I had a numbness in my right ring finger, little finger and hand and a vasculare headache in my forhead. I know most heart attacks involve the left side of the body but I also know that women have different sympoms from men. Given my family history, I didn't mess around.

The 2 previous times I went through this, I got an EKG and blood oxygen tests which always looked fine. This time, they did those tests and more, but first I have to share Adam's experience watching Barbara put my gi-freakin-normous IV in the inside of my right elbow. It hurt and I told her so! I also felt something warm running down my arm and he back of my hand. Was pretty sure I was bleeding.

Adam said, he saw blood spurting out of my arm, spraying the side of the bed while forming a pool on the floor. The solution? Throw a towel on the floor!!! EKG came back fine. So the did more tests this time. They did a CAT Scan of my chest and abdomen and then another one with contrast. Iodine injected into my IV created one of the weirdest experiences of my life! My hands got hot then it felt like my pajama pants caught on fire, then the rest of me, then I got cold and it went away. About that fast.

Later they did an ultrasound of my gall bladder in case that was having an attack.

Six hours after the first EGK, they came in and did another one and took more blood. Apparently the blood on the floor couldn't be used.

All this time Adam is trying to sleep in a chair. Poor kid doesn't have his license yet. He only has a permit, so he can't drive without me in the vehicle. He was stuck, witnessing all this. Kindof rough for a 17 year old, but he handled it very well. He had to leave the building to get phone reception to pass on to his sibs the updates. And while he was doing that, Danica, 14, was home watching 2 year old Matthew, my grandson, with no adult there to help her, as she worried about her mom. Remember we thought I was having a heart attack or 2...

I have always like taking tests as I seem to do well on them, but these tests, even though I kept passing them, were not my favorites!

The next tests were glow in the dark. Since they would not let me drink water all night long, graham crackers were impossible to eat! They made me drink whole milk, Gross. When you don't drink milk it tastes like drinking meat while smelling wet fur. Gross. However, at that point, liquid was good. They said the milk and crackers would help my body assimilate the radioactive isotopes they were going to put in my IV. WHAT?

Not one but 2 heart attacks?

If you are the oldest person in your entire family because of heart disease and you have serious chest pains and things like unto that, you are not messing about, wasting time, but getting to a hospital. That would be my weekend. Lovely. My blood pressure is normally about 125/70, nice and low. But a few times in the last 2 years, my blood pressure shoots up and gives me a run for my money. I had no idea why until I mentioned to a physician's assistant that my orthopedic surgeon said he had no problem with me taking 3-800mg Ibuprophen a day for knee pain. Huh. I had a problem with that! I kind of like my liver and my kidneys just the way they are. The PA, calmly said taking the Ibuprophen is probably what jacked up my blood pressure, so I stopped taking it all together months ago. It's okay, my knee is doing much better now anyway.

So what caused my blood pressure to jack up this weekend? Maybe stress? Are ya paying attention here? Life is a bit crazy! I also think it has something to do with how I eat. People think I eat pretty well. I make my own savory olive oil with herbs I grow and things like that. But more and more lately, I'm afraid to eat most everything. Everything gives me heartburn. Everything makes me feel distress after eating. I was at a loss.

I should at this juncture explain the picture on this blog! The tape around the IV really wrinkled up the inside of my right elbow to give me an idea of what I'll look like in a few years when I hit 100. That IV is the most painful thing I've had in my arm. The gauge they use in ER is way bigger than the surgical needles. I squawked like crazy when Barbara stuck me. I like her otherwise, but that was seriously not pleasant for the next 24 hours I spent in ER.