Heart Attack

I thought I was having one. There I was minding my own business doing my food shopping at the lovely new Raley's down the street. I was almost finished, making a last pass by the dairy, when I felt this very weird, unwarranted sensation. Like a huge bubble in my chest. Pressing against stuff in there. I tried swallowing, but that didn't help. I tried not to think of all the "women have weird symptoms when having heart attacks" articles I've read, but that didn't help. I wended my way up to the checkout line as the feeling of intense pressure was growing. It almost felt like I was a Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon and had been filled almost to bursting.

As I stood in the line, smiling and nodding and barely hearing a thing the dear boy of a checker was saying, the clenching feeling grew worse, went up my neck and into my ears. Am I having a heart attack? I can't be having a heart attack. Thank god I took my baby aspirin this morning. What should I do? Should I go home and see what happens? What if it doesn't stop? Then I'll have to deal with it at home, and with D as well. Should I go to my doctor's office down the street? What can I possibly say to them: Hi, I may or may not be having a heart attack so I thought I'd just hop over and check it out. I almost wished I'd crumple at the cashier's feet, just to save myself this decision.

Of course, whenever something like this happens to me, I always go straight back to the night I had my aneurysm. That was a little more clear cut than this in that my right hand and leg had stopped working, but there was still the anxiety of What To Do. We did call the paramedics and I did get taken to the hospital and I was there for weeks and weeks--and ever since, I guess I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I decided better foolish than dead, so I sucked it up and drove to my doctor's. Where, after an EKG that was pretty damn good, he said he didn't know what caused my symptoms, but he was pretty sure my heart was fine. And just in case, he took blood so they could look at my enzymes or whatever.

And from the point I typed the word aneurysm above, I've been hyperventilating. Because of course, there are two kinds of aneurysms: cerebral, which I had, and cardiac. Oy vey.