The start of 2022 brought one illness after another for my family. Between COVID and the flu, I felt like I had been at the doctor’s office constantly for three months.
Finally, in March, the kids were all back to school, so I set about cleaning and disinfecting the house. I started having chest pain that felt like a fleeting pinch. It would last for a few seconds and I’d feel pressure, but when I sat down, it stopped. I figured I was coming down with the flu, and I pushed through, trying to get the house in order before I got really sick.
That lasted for two days. By the third day the pain was persistent enough that I almost mentioned it to my husband. But I knew he would want me to go to the hospital, and I just couldn’t face yet another trip to the doctors. I was so burned out from being in waiting rooms.
Later that day I was vacuuming when I suddenly felt like I had to sit down. I plopped into my husband’s recliner and set my phone on the armrest. When I felt better I got up and walked to my office, two rooms over. When I got there, I knew I was going to faint. My vision went dark and I could hear the blood rushing as loud as the ocean in my ears.
I laid down on the floor and immediately felt like an elephant had landed on my chest. In the seconds before I passed out, I realized I was having a heart attack.
In the hospital, doctors realized I had a complete block of the left main coronary artery, which meant half my heart had no blood flow. Normally, doctors treat this with open heart surgery, but I wasn’t stable enough. Instead doctors used an Impella pump, a device inserted through an artery in my groin, to restart blood flow to my heart. After that, I was stable enough for surgery.
Read the full article: I thought I caught the flu from my kids. I was actually having a massive heart attack.
