Regarding our impending heart attacks

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I agree, though I’ve never had a panic attack that bad. The mind/body are so connected that any time you feel that sense of impending doom you need to get help, whether it’s for mental or physical reasons. I am so sorry if you get them like that, clairobsure. I’s a terrible feeling and not something anybody would want to experience if they can help it.

Dibbs things have improved so much it scares me. We finally lost our house to foreclosure for real (which we’ve fought in court for years now), auctioned off in March. Then found nobody would rent to us because of it, after taking our money each time for application fees… Some awful things happened and I spent a night in jail. (Ha! Bet y’all didn’t see that one coming!) Neither did I, and it happened soon after musing Well, as a writer, it’s an experience I could use somewhere down the line…

All I can say is, be careful what you wish for.

But now we have a fantastic rental home being cleaned and painted and waiting for us to move in. I have a “new” (to me) wheelchair (streamlined black, jack!) that I cracked up the valets about at the hospital today when I told them I was wondering how to pimp my ride. :smiley: (I was thinking decoupage the chrome with funny papers, but that might be a little much.)

But here’s what I really want to say to anybody reading this thread, and especially to those who fear death but seem to be ready to give up at the first (or second) major thing they might have to go through: don’t. I’ve had ARDS. I’ve mentioned it two or three times here on the board but nobody’s ever asked me about it. First off, who the hell as ever heard of ARDS? I sure hadn’t. All I knew was I was suddenly fighting for my life, and didn’t know why. I couldn’t breathe. I was suffocating to death and I knew it—but why? At first I thought I had finally, really, lost my mind. It was like waking up inside a coffin but I was in a coma (a medically induced one) while several (I learned later) medical peeps were freaking out because this was something they’d only read about in the books and they were fighting for my life, too, on the outside. I couldn’t communicate. I couldn’t tell them “I hear you, HELP ME.”

Three and a half weeks of fighting for any little sip of air I could get. My pulmonary doctor later told me that he had to “balance (?)” and pray that he wouldn’t blow out my then papery lungs (they freeze. you can’t breathe in and you can’t breathe out) with the tiny sips of air he was giving me, but I didn’t know it. He said it was like trying to force more air into a basketball that is already so inflated it would make it blow…

That was fourteen years ago. Do you know how many people I’ve got to annoy since then? :smiley: The thing is, I survived. Back then I think the fatality rate was 60/40. Now it’s 50/50. Never give up. Fight. Fight. Until you make it. There’s always a chance. That’s why, though I would never want to go through something like that again, I can’t sign a paper that says I choose DNR. Because there’s always hope. There’s always a way if you fight hard enough. And near the end I found peace even though I didn’t know which way it was going to go.

I’ll get off my soapbox now, but I just thought you all need to really know, you can live, even when you think you can’t. You can. You can. Go through it with a battle cry! I can!

42

I don’t have anything to add except to say thank you for this post.

43

You’re an amazing survivor, no doubt!:slight_smile:

Dylan Thomas wrote a famous poem about the “Dying of the Light” but I don’t know how it goes, though I think it’s what you expressed so well – keep death a bay!

Thanks for sharing all that and keep fighting the good fight, Becky.:slight_smile:

44

Very sorry to hear about your loss, gigi.

45

Fuzzy_wuzzy – sorry that there’s been so many deaths among your loved ones of late, wow!

As far as your last two sentences … I can relate to considering the particulars of one’s own situation and doing what’s best, as I hope I can muster the courage in that way if things go totally south for me one day. Sure don’t want to be a massive burden on anyone or finite recourses, that’s for sure!

Hang in there and try not let things get you too down too much, 'cause you’re not alone in having problems in this thing called Life.

46

I just read this in a FB group I belong to and had to share. Hope it’s all right; I’m not making fun of him/her/us but I guess us Appalachian hillbillies really are tough. It goes…Asken prayers for my great-grandmother who broke her neck. She’s doin’ good but a little down about a urinary tract infection she got…

47

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.

And yes, Becky - thanks for sharing your story. You add a lot to this community.

48

…I’m humbled and appreciative. Thank you.

49

I’ll see your Dylan Thomas and raise you a Blood, Sweat, and Tears

50

Psssst…

That was written by Laura Nyro (the 5th Dimension did a bunch of her stuff).

51

To the OP -

Look at the bright side - for 50% of heart attacks, the very first symptom is death.

No worries, no anxiety, just “click”.

52

Goddammit. Laura Nyro. That woman has been nothing but trouble.

53

If you gotta go (and apparently you do), you might as well go quick, is my thinking. I have a number of relatives who have died of heart attacks. Some were doing fun things at the time–golfing, skiing, on a cruise. This seems to be how people in my family die, and as far as I can tell it beats long and lingering. Just hope I’m not driving at the time. (Or skiing, which is not too likely really.)

54

About 10 years ago, when I was in my fifties, I woke in the middle of the night with a horrendous pain in my jaw, neck, chest, left arm to the point I couldn’t move the arm. I lay on my bed and after a half hour it went away. Deep in denial, I went back to sleep. The next day I was able to get an appointment with a cardiologist.

Whatever it was, he told me, it wasn’t a heart attack. Oh, and in a followup, I passed the stress test with flying colors. And when he said he detected this ‘thing’ on my cardio gram I asked if it was within measurement error, and when he said ‘yes’, and I said ‘Then why do I care?’

What ever it was it never came back.

55

That sounds pretty scary, but at least it didn’t come back.:slight_smile:

56

It really does sound vague, but it’s shocking how many people use exactly the same phrase and then turn out to have been experiencing a heart attack. So apparently it’s something you know when you feel it. (Seriously, how many of us use the word “doom” in daily life? A whole lot of us who are having heart attacks, and not many others, apparently.)

Troponins. Which is why you get yourself to the ER either way and let them check your blood and do an EKG and maybe an angio. While the *symptoms *(what you feel) of a heart attack and a panic attack can sometimes be similar, the *signs *(what the doctor sees) are very different.

Look, I hate to break it to ya, but you’re right. You’re going to die. Will it be of a heart attack? Well, statistically, we can’t rule it out. But whether it’s that or something else, you will die.

If you’d prefer it not be a heart attack, then quit smoking or don’t start, eat a diet high in vegetables and fruits, lose some weight (unless you’re already underweight), exercise at least 5 times a week, and take any medications or supplements your doctor suggests. That will move the odds in favor of you dying of something else before your fatal heart attack.

Prepare your Advance Directives. I like this site a whole lot. It’s the one I used, and the one I’ve asked the people who want me to be their health care proxy to use: MyDirectives But if you don’t use that one, use something. Tell the people who care about you how you want to be treated now, while you can.

Consider making your funeral arrangements now. That’s such a burden off your survivors, I can’t tell you. Whether you want to be donated, cremated or buried, you can make all those arrangements now.

Then get on with your life. You’ve done everything you can to deal with it for now. You’ll have to deal with the rest if/when it happens.

57

I’ve been prone to panic attacks pretty much all my life. I know the feeling of impending doom well. I’ve gone to the ER on three separate occasions thinking it might be a heart attack. Got THOROUGHLY checked out each time over a period of several hours-- EKG, chest x-ray, blood test for cardiac enzymes. BTW, if you’re thinking of going to the ER, but afraid you’ll be shamed or ridiculed or accused of hypochondria, you won’t be. Each time everyone in the ER was great, they were glad I came, said to come back if I was still worried. I’ve read that sometimes women who think they’re having a heart attack aren’t taken seriously. Mercifully, that was not my experience. This was a gigantic military hospital…and also BTW, even civilians can go to the ER there. I took my boyfriend, and he WAS having a heart attack-- had quad bypass a week later. When it comes to acute care, military hospitals are tops. Anyway, now when I get the impending doom (with no discernible alarming physical symptoms), I take .25 mg of xanax, and in 45 mins I’m okay.

58

Sorry, that was misleading! I should have said “a Tuesday”, “a Friday”, as I was trying to illustrate how quickly cancer can kill you. This was many years ago.

I remember thinking, darn, one of the few good things about cancer is you have some time to get things in order (per the OP) and tell people you care about them. And he didn’t even get that, it was so quick.

59

Same here. I take maintenance antidepressants which help me not get to the panic stages, but if I do, I have lorazepam to help me calm down or at least get some sleep and be able to manage the panic a little better.

60

The trouble with the heart-attack-themed panic attack is that it might actually BE a heart attack. If your panic attacks take the form of anxiety about, say, UFO abduction, it’s potentially easier to talk yourself out of them.