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On Monday, December 23, 2019, while out walking our dog with my husband I started to sweat so badly it felt like water was pouring off my head. I was about a block and a half away from home when I started to get some pressure on my chest. A half block from home I started to experience terrible pain in my neck and my whole jaw (from ear to ear).

I got to our backyard and sat down on the swing. I took a few deep breaths and explained to my husband what I was feeling. I told him I thought I was having a heart attack. He was trained in first aid at work and assured me I was probably having severe acid reflux, as he’d experienced that once himself. We came inside and he gave me an omeprezole tablet and within 20 min. I was feeling much better.

The next morning I called my doctor’s office, just to be on the safe side, as I’d taken too much of one of my pain medications the previous week. For four days I’d taken twice the dosage of Diclofenac by mistake, thinking I’d put one of my other medicines that looks similar in my pill box, I’d actually put two of that medication in instead and taken it for four days before catching the mistake. I had terrible dizziness, headache, nausea all week.

My doctor wasn’t in, since it was Christmas Eve day, but they asked me about my symptoms and told me neck and jaw pain are common signs of heart attack, I should go to the ER and get testing to see if I’d had a heart attack or not, so that’s what we did.

The blood tests showed increased heart enzymes that indicate damage to the heart. My EKG looked good, oxygenation was good, blood pressure was a little elevated. They did an ECG and the cardiologist discovered I have a bicuspid heart valve (two of the flaps of the valve are fused together and probably have been since I was born) which caused a slight murmur and leak. He said it wasn’t anything to worry about, but he felt sure I had a heart attack.

They wanted to do an arterial catheterization right away. They prepped me for the procedure and went into my wrist, only able to access one side of my heart. They then went in through my groin to access the other side of the heart. They only found a tiny bit of calcium, no plaque or blockage of any kind. They put a “plug” in the femoral artery and sent me to a room.

I had to lie on my back, flat, for 3 hours after so I wouldn’t hemorrhage. Because of my spinal and nerve issues my back hurt so bad the nurse tried to prop up one hip to alleviate the pain and the “plug” came out causing a bleed out into my groin. A lump the size of a baseball formed in my groin, filled with blood.

Nurses (male and female) took turns applying pressure which caused so much pain I crashed. I had no blood pressure, they had to apply pressure for nearly 30 min. and moved me into the ICU.

I spent the night in the ICU getting fluids, to flush the dye out of my kidneys, being watched closely, vitals being monitored every 15 minutes. They watched for bleeding in my groin, monitored urine output, pain level, etc.

By the afternoon on Christmas day I was able to come home. The doctor that did the catheterization told me that she thought the contributing factors to having the heart attack were the extra doses of the pain medication and stress. She assured me my heart looked good and while there was a chance I could have another heart attack, I should be fine.

I have to follow up with my Doctor on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2020, but I had to call the hospital and discharging physician Saturday because the blood thinner they put me on caused terrible neck and head aches, dizziness within 20 minutes of taking it. They took me off of it until I see my doctor.

I don’t know if I’m still going to have the back injections or not, won’t know until I see my doctor on Thursday.

Needless to say I’m struggling with how hard I’ve tried to get healthy, how the effort has caused deterioration on my joints and increased nerve damage and now I’ve had a heart attack. I’m really questioning whether my efforts have been worth it, or whether they only made things worse.