Tuesday Night Drama
Mar. 13th, 2009 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perzephone
Behind a cut since it could be triggery to unsuspecting readers...
I've been off of my ACE inhibitor & calcium channel blocker medication for a couple of weeks now due to the job. I am not supposed to take time off for the 90-day disciplinary probation period, so I was waiting til my doctor had a Saturday appointment available. Her next appt date was the 21st. My blood pressure meds do a pretty good job of keeping my b.p. in normal ranges, which is about 130/75 for me. I hadn't been feeling any major concerns while I was off the Lotrel, so what happened on Tuesday night came as an unpleasant and nasty shock.
I had some leftover Chinese food for lunch at work & it had given me heartburn, so I popped some Rolaids & didn't think anything else about it. About 6:30pm or so, I was ironing, singing along to the radio & the heartburn came back with a vengeance. It felt like someone had just dropped a live coal into my solar plexus & set it on fire. I thought I was going to have a bad nasty bout of diarrhea, too, since my stomach suddenly felt very tight & crampy. But then my heart started pounding, my chest got tight & I couldn't take a breath. Then my head started pounding. The pain was immense and intense and I've never felt anything like it in my entire life. Pain started radiating down from my chest to my back, arms & legs. I honestly thought I was having a heart attack.
I staggered around the house for a few minutes, holding my head & muttering, "What the fuck is wrong with me?!" Rob was over at his nephew's house, so I called him & said, "You need to come get me because I'm having a heart attack". Rob promptly got in the car & was on his way home at about 110mph. He got pulled over by the cops at Rainbow & Vegas - they had a gun to his head & told him if he hadn't pulled over they were going to pit the car or shoot the tires out. While he was being pulled over, I was trying to lock the back door, put clothes on, find my prescriptions and brush my teeth. Why I was worried about my breath I have no idea - I was on autopilot. At one point I laid down on the bed & just prayed for a fast demise. So the phone started ringing & I stood up from the bed & everything went all gray and wavy. Rob was on the phone saying he'd been pulled over & I needed to call an ambulance. The cop got on the phone because he thought Rob was jerking him around & I burst into tears & told the cop I was dying. I started staggering around the house again, feeling like I'd forgotten something. Oh, yeah, the front door was locked... I got back up to unlock the front door & I had Rob, the cops, two ambulances & the in-laws all show up at the same time.
The EMTs pretty much took over, hooked me up to an EKG, took my blood pressure, tried to draw some blood, couldn't because they blew the vein out immediately... and then I started vomiting. Uncontrollably. My b.p. was 212/110, I was having arrhythmias & my pulse was at 40bpm. The ride to the hospital was a blur - I was going in & out of consciousness the whole time - whenever I was conscious I was vomiting. The EMTs were just trying to find a vein, any vein, to get an IV started so they could shoot me up w/a anti-nausea medication. They finally shot it into my arm muscle, which robs the medication of a lot of its efficacy - they kept pumping me full of the anti-emetic, but it wasn't having much of an affect. The ride to the hospital was agony - the interior ambulance lights were so bright, the siren was so loud & everytime they hit a bump or stopped suddenly, I'd hurl again. When we got to the hospital... it was like one of the scenes from a zombie apocalypse movie. Bodies were lining the hallways - everyone's got a bad stomach virus or flu or something - I heard a lot of puking & moaning. I got admitted & into a room fast, though. The nurses & the ER doctors kept asking me my name, date of birth, what meds I took, if I knew what day it was - it says on my paperwork I had was experiencing altered states of consciousness which I find amusing. The constant questions were getting on my nerves because I felt like no one was writing this shit down, but I guess they were trying to evaluate my mental state & making sure all my gears were still turning.
Tuesday night was a very long night. They couldn't get a good vein - the veins I've got are small, deep and because of my blood pressure being so high, they were even more constricted, so as soon as they'd tap a vein it would collapse. I've got bruises up & down both arms, my hands - like the base of my thumbs, my wrists, the tops of my feet. They finally got a vein in the arch of my foot about midnight. That shit hurt and rendered me completely helpless because I couldn't walk, and it made sleeping extremely uncomfortable because if I rolled & pinched the line, the IV machine would start beeping insanely & a nurse would come in & make me lay on my back. The nurses kept waking me up to take my blood pressure & put more drugs in my drip, I wasn't allowed any water or just some freaking Tylenol for my head, which was killing me. Part of the problem w/my tossing my cookies continually is because whenever I get a headache, especially migraine-grade headaches, I get sick to my stomach. Because they wouldn't give me anything for my head, I kept puking. It's an overstimulated vagus nerve & that headache was all up in my frontal lobe. The blood vessels in my eyes burst, my nose was bleeding and I was crying bloody tears & my face is still dotted with petechiae, especially all around my eyes. My head only stopped hurting this morning - and the blood-filled eye effect might have been cool when I was 15, but right now it's just disturbing. They gave me a cranial CT scan to check for embolisms, aneurysms & concussions - everything there was normal.
The big risk in quitting a blood pressure medication cold-turkey is it can cause a stroke & that's what was happening to me - and if I hadn't gotten assistance, I'd probably be in pretty bad shape right now. I still feel stupid for calling an ambulance in the first place & not just toughing it out since it wasn't a heart attack, but I'd never felt pain like that before. Rob & his mom took shifts w/me in the hospital. Wednesday I spent the day in the hospital waiting around. I kept falling asleep & in my moments of unconsciousness I amused everyone with weird stories about riding zebras. All the chemicals in the blood tests that indicate a heart attack came back negative, a back x-ray revealed a second kidney stone, and I mostly waited for my blood pressure to come down from 'freaking scary' to 'mildly paranoid' (150/90). They wanted to give me a stress test but between the IV in my foot & just feeling wiped out (and the fact that my head would not stop pounding - they had a nitro patch on me which can cause headaches) I was not up to a stress test. They also wanted me to stay an extra night, but I was thinking $100 an hour & having to stay with an obnoxious roommate was not conducive to a swift recovery. They at least gave me a walker so I could get up to go to the bathroom on my own, & by about 4pm, I was able to have a drink of water & some Tylenol (and some cherry gelatin, yum). I checked out against doctor's advice & was home again around 6:30 Weds. night.
Went to my GP yesterday & got bitched at again for letting my b.p. meds run out, another warning about how stopping b.p. meds can cause a stroke & that's what had almost happened to me. I probably have a chronic kidney infection due to the other stone - which may explain why my white blood cell count is always high & why my back always hurts. Today & most of yesterday has just been spent sleeping & dealing with the pain from throwing up for 16 hours. I can't turn my head or lift my arms - I feel like I've got whiplash. Today I can take deep full breaths, though. My doctor is not releasing me to return to work until my blood pressure is under control, so I've got to go back to her on Monday & I'm going to a cardiologist on Wednesday.
I need to go back on a low-sodium, low-fat diet, which to me equates to 'no-flavor-whatsoever'. Salt is a God in the kitchen! (I was on a sodium-free diet for 2 years & my blood pressure didn't go down at all. I lost weight mainly because there is only so much plain rice and chicken and oatmeal I can eat). I'm still just exhausted & sore, but today I've been able to stay awake - yesterday I kept getting hit with random nap attacks. I've been trying to stay relaxed & sleep when my body tells me to sleep. I got smacked with a big ol' Pay-Attention stick - I was trying to avoid sick days by waiting for a Saturday appointment, so instead of taking like, 4 hours off work & going to get my prescriptions refilled, I got a 4-day unpaid vacation (and possibly more if my b.p. doesn't come down over the weekend). My job called yesterday & my boss said since she hadn't hear anything from us yesterday morning she was going to send an investigator to the house to see if I was still alive - I know I told both Rob & his mom to call my job, but I might have told them to tell my boss if she wanted my zebra so much she would have to shoot me off of it instead of telling them to tell her I would be out of work for a few days.
There is a spiritual aspect to this whole incident that I'm still exploring. I'm not quite there yet but I'll get to the bottom of it. I've been looking at punching bags, too, since I obviously need some way to relieve stress and anxiety and just walking the dog isn't doing it for me.
I've been off of my ACE inhibitor & calcium channel blocker medication for a couple of weeks now due to the job. I am not supposed to take time off for the 90-day disciplinary probation period, so I was waiting til my doctor had a Saturday appointment available. Her next appt date was the 21st. My blood pressure meds do a pretty good job of keeping my b.p. in normal ranges, which is about 130/75 for me. I hadn't been feeling any major concerns while I was off the Lotrel, so what happened on Tuesday night came as an unpleasant and nasty shock.
I had some leftover Chinese food for lunch at work & it had given me heartburn, so I popped some Rolaids & didn't think anything else about it. About 6:30pm or so, I was ironing, singing along to the radio & the heartburn came back with a vengeance. It felt like someone had just dropped a live coal into my solar plexus & set it on fire. I thought I was going to have a bad nasty bout of diarrhea, too, since my stomach suddenly felt very tight & crampy. But then my heart started pounding, my chest got tight & I couldn't take a breath. Then my head started pounding. The pain was immense and intense and I've never felt anything like it in my entire life. Pain started radiating down from my chest to my back, arms & legs. I honestly thought I was having a heart attack.
I staggered around the house for a few minutes, holding my head & muttering, "What the fuck is wrong with me?!" Rob was over at his nephew's house, so I called him & said, "You need to come get me because I'm having a heart attack". Rob promptly got in the car & was on his way home at about 110mph. He got pulled over by the cops at Rainbow & Vegas - they had a gun to his head & told him if he hadn't pulled over they were going to pit the car or shoot the tires out. While he was being pulled over, I was trying to lock the back door, put clothes on, find my prescriptions and brush my teeth. Why I was worried about my breath I have no idea - I was on autopilot. At one point I laid down on the bed & just prayed for a fast demise. So the phone started ringing & I stood up from the bed & everything went all gray and wavy. Rob was on the phone saying he'd been pulled over & I needed to call an ambulance. The cop got on the phone because he thought Rob was jerking him around & I burst into tears & told the cop I was dying. I started staggering around the house again, feeling like I'd forgotten something. Oh, yeah, the front door was locked... I got back up to unlock the front door & I had Rob, the cops, two ambulances & the in-laws all show up at the same time.
The EMTs pretty much took over, hooked me up to an EKG, took my blood pressure, tried to draw some blood, couldn't because they blew the vein out immediately... and then I started vomiting. Uncontrollably. My b.p. was 212/110, I was having arrhythmias & my pulse was at 40bpm. The ride to the hospital was a blur - I was going in & out of consciousness the whole time - whenever I was conscious I was vomiting. The EMTs were just trying to find a vein, any vein, to get an IV started so they could shoot me up w/a anti-nausea medication. They finally shot it into my arm muscle, which robs the medication of a lot of its efficacy - they kept pumping me full of the anti-emetic, but it wasn't having much of an affect. The ride to the hospital was agony - the interior ambulance lights were so bright, the siren was so loud & everytime they hit a bump or stopped suddenly, I'd hurl again. When we got to the hospital... it was like one of the scenes from a zombie apocalypse movie. Bodies were lining the hallways - everyone's got a bad stomach virus or flu or something - I heard a lot of puking & moaning. I got admitted & into a room fast, though. The nurses & the ER doctors kept asking me my name, date of birth, what meds I took, if I knew what day it was - it says on my paperwork I had was experiencing altered states of consciousness which I find amusing. The constant questions were getting on my nerves because I felt like no one was writing this shit down, but I guess they were trying to evaluate my mental state & making sure all my gears were still turning.
Tuesday night was a very long night. They couldn't get a good vein - the veins I've got are small, deep and because of my blood pressure being so high, they were even more constricted, so as soon as they'd tap a vein it would collapse. I've got bruises up & down both arms, my hands - like the base of my thumbs, my wrists, the tops of my feet. They finally got a vein in the arch of my foot about midnight. That shit hurt and rendered me completely helpless because I couldn't walk, and it made sleeping extremely uncomfortable because if I rolled & pinched the line, the IV machine would start beeping insanely & a nurse would come in & make me lay on my back. The nurses kept waking me up to take my blood pressure & put more drugs in my drip, I wasn't allowed any water or just some freaking Tylenol for my head, which was killing me. Part of the problem w/my tossing my cookies continually is because whenever I get a headache, especially migraine-grade headaches, I get sick to my stomach. Because they wouldn't give me anything for my head, I kept puking. It's an overstimulated vagus nerve & that headache was all up in my frontal lobe. The blood vessels in my eyes burst, my nose was bleeding and I was crying bloody tears & my face is still dotted with petechiae, especially all around my eyes. My head only stopped hurting this morning - and the blood-filled eye effect might have been cool when I was 15, but right now it's just disturbing. They gave me a cranial CT scan to check for embolisms, aneurysms & concussions - everything there was normal.
The big risk in quitting a blood pressure medication cold-turkey is it can cause a stroke & that's what was happening to me - and if I hadn't gotten assistance, I'd probably be in pretty bad shape right now. I still feel stupid for calling an ambulance in the first place & not just toughing it out since it wasn't a heart attack, but I'd never felt pain like that before. Rob & his mom took shifts w/me in the hospital. Wednesday I spent the day in the hospital waiting around. I kept falling asleep & in my moments of unconsciousness I amused everyone with weird stories about riding zebras. All the chemicals in the blood tests that indicate a heart attack came back negative, a back x-ray revealed a second kidney stone, and I mostly waited for my blood pressure to come down from 'freaking scary' to 'mildly paranoid' (150/90). They wanted to give me a stress test but between the IV in my foot & just feeling wiped out (and the fact that my head would not stop pounding - they had a nitro patch on me which can cause headaches) I was not up to a stress test. They also wanted me to stay an extra night, but I was thinking $100 an hour & having to stay with an obnoxious roommate was not conducive to a swift recovery. They at least gave me a walker so I could get up to go to the bathroom on my own, & by about 4pm, I was able to have a drink of water & some Tylenol (and some cherry gelatin, yum). I checked out against doctor's advice & was home again around 6:30 Weds. night.
Went to my GP yesterday & got bitched at again for letting my b.p. meds run out, another warning about how stopping b.p. meds can cause a stroke & that's what had almost happened to me. I probably have a chronic kidney infection due to the other stone - which may explain why my white blood cell count is always high & why my back always hurts. Today & most of yesterday has just been spent sleeping & dealing with the pain from throwing up for 16 hours. I can't turn my head or lift my arms - I feel like I've got whiplash. Today I can take deep full breaths, though. My doctor is not releasing me to return to work until my blood pressure is under control, so I've got to go back to her on Monday & I'm going to a cardiologist on Wednesday.
I need to go back on a low-sodium, low-fat diet, which to me equates to 'no-flavor-whatsoever'. Salt is a God in the kitchen! (I was on a sodium-free diet for 2 years & my blood pressure didn't go down at all. I lost weight mainly because there is only so much plain rice and chicken and oatmeal I can eat). I'm still just exhausted & sore, but today I've been able to stay awake - yesterday I kept getting hit with random nap attacks. I've been trying to stay relaxed & sleep when my body tells me to sleep. I got smacked with a big ol' Pay-Attention stick - I was trying to avoid sick days by waiting for a Saturday appointment, so instead of taking like, 4 hours off work & going to get my prescriptions refilled, I got a 4-day unpaid vacation (and possibly more if my b.p. doesn't come down over the weekend). My job called yesterday & my boss said since she hadn't hear anything from us yesterday morning she was going to send an investigator to the house to see if I was still alive - I know I told both Rob & his mom to call my job, but I might have told them to tell my boss if she wanted my zebra so much she would have to shoot me off of it instead of telling them to tell her I would be out of work for a few days.
There is a spiritual aspect to this whole incident that I'm still exploring. I'm not quite there yet but I'll get to the bottom of it. I've been looking at punching bags, too, since I obviously need some way to relieve stress and anxiety and just walking the dog isn't doing it for me.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 05:23 am (UTC)Back on Mah Feet
Date: 2009-03-14 07:47 pm (UTC)I feel good today, except for my left shoulder which is still pretty tight. Ice/heat, ice/heat, muscle relaxant, ice/heat, Tylenol, ice/heat, ad nauseum.
I think I would have been better off just hearing, "Oh, you could have died" instead of "you were about to have a stroke". At least with death it's like, over relatively fast. With a stroke... egh. So I'm making changes NOW instead of when I get a roun' tuit.