Last night I had an abrupt wake up call that ended with a phone call to 911. We had gone to bed late after enjoying an evening outside complete with a bonfire. I had been asleep for about two hours when I woke up to a horrible pain in my chest with shortness of breath. I tried to get up and walk around but quickly realized that the pain wasn't going away. I checked my FitBit and was shocked to see that my heart rate was climbing rapidly. I tried to wake up Doug, but he was completely zonked out upstairs after a long week at work and a late night in the Heinisch Home. I finally decided that I had to call 911.
The dispatcher that answered was extremely helpful. She listened to my symptoms, requested an EMT visit and had another dispatcher try to call Doug and Meg to wake them up. I could barely make it to the door to unlock it, so there was no way that I could climb the stairs or even shout upstairs to wake them up. Neither would answer their phone for the dispatcher and I didn't want to give them Cam's number as I was afraid of scaring him.
Thankfully, it only took the EMTs about 10 minutes to arrive. They instantly started asking me questions as they began to hook me up to an EKG machine. My pulse rate was in the 120s by that time, which I was glad to see, but they realized that it was still too high. My blood pressure was also off the charts for me at 168/110. Fortunately, my oxygen level was above 98 and I didn't have a fever, so that eliminated COVID as a possibility. I wasn't concerned about that and neither were they, but it seemed appropriate for them to check as my chest hurt so incredibly bad when they arrived.
Through all of the noise, no one in our house woke up. They finally asked if they could wake Doug up. I explained where he was sleeping and the EMT asked multiple times if he had a gun. I reassured him that we did not own a gun, but as I thought about it later, it made perfect sense why they would ask. When they first woke Doug up, he thought that the house was on fire due to the bright light and the firefighter in the bedroom. By the time he got downstairs he was fully awake, understood that there wasn't a fire and realized the seriousness of my situation. The EMTs ran three different tests over a fifteen minute period and felt confident that I was not having a heart attack. My pulse rate and blood pressure were still high so they gave me two options. They could take me to the hospital or I could wait at home and give it a little more time and if I still felt bad, then Doug could take me. They felt comfortable with the second option as they believed that the racing heart would subside and gave me several ideas on how to get it to drop if my pulse climbed back up again. They also said that the main cause of chest pain and a racing heart besides a heart attack was a panic attack, although that didn't generally didn't happen while sleeping, it was still a possibility.
I decided to follow the second option and Doug supported that. We thanked the EMTs and appreciated their help greatly. In returned they thanked Doug for not shooting them when they woke him up. They strongly suggested getting some sleep and eventually I was able to follow their advice. I didn't feel the greatest today and realized that my pulse rate was still high for me (in the 90s compared to the low 60s.) I did a little bit of research on the causes of a racing heartbeat including stress, hormones, dehydration and RA. After a lot of reading we decided that I would monitor my blood pressure and pulse rate at home this week and call the doctor if they remained high or if I had another episode like last night. It was definitely one of the scariest nights of my life and a good reminder of why we need to continue to monitor our own health needs during this trying time.
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