It’s been nearly a week now since my big adventure: the night I called 911 and was taken to hospital in an ambulance.
So now the bare facts are out of the way, let me set the stage.
It was Friday evening, and I had to head back to work for a special family event at the school. I brought my youngest daughter and her best friend along for the fun, and because we were in a rush, I grabbed a donut and large coffee at Timmie’s on the way there, having skipped dinner. That donut was a grim and fateful mistake, although the reason why wouldn’t become clear for another twelve hours.
But back to the story.
We went to the event at the school and had a lot of fun. My daughter bought a ticket for the 50/50 draw, and she wanted to stay until the end of the night to see if she was a winner. Unfortunately, she was off by a few numbers, and at about 8:45, just after the draw, we decided to call it a night. As I headed out of the gymnasium, I was hit by a growing pain in my chest. Thinking it was gas (from my less than ideal dinner), I made for the staff washroom. The pain got much, much worse very, very quickly, and I found myself leaning on coat hooks in the hallway, moaning like a woman in labour. Embarrassed, I headed in to the washroom where I rode out the pain for the next 5 minutes or so. Finally, the pains subsided and I figured it must have just been a very intense episode of gas (although no outward manifestations of said gas had presented themselves…ahem).
I picked up my daughter and her pal in the corridor, both looking quite frightened indeed, and we headed out to the car. After about five minutes of driving, just as I was hitting the on-ramp for the 80km/hr highway home, I felt another attack coming on. Knowing what I was in for, I pulled over and tried to ride it out on the side of the road. It was truly just like being in advanced labour. In order to cope with the pain I needed to breathe deeply, I felt like all my clothes were too tight, I was sweaty and opened the windows to the -10 wind outside, and I couldn’t talk to answer my daughters pleas of, “Mommy, are you going to be okay?” The difference from labour was that the pain — although equally intense — was in my chest, and it didn’t subside after a minute but kept on for 4 or 5 minutes. Somewhere during that hellish five minutes, I asked myself the question, “am I having a heart attack?”
But again, the pain faded away after several minutes, and I was able to make it back to the ‘hood and drop off my daughter’s friend safe and sound, at home. Feeling a bit shaky, I sent my little one into the house to fetch a box of Gas-X (yes, I still thought it must be gas) from the house and gobbled the last two tablets in the car before heading out on the road again, this time to pick up my older daughter from a birthday party. By this time I was nearly half an hour late to pick her up, and I really felt that I just needed to get through this errand and get home before any more gas cramps came my way.
No such luck.
Again, on a stretch of 80km/hr road, the pains hit hard. I pulled over, tore off my seatbelt, opened the windows, stripped off my coat and unbuttoned my jeans (hey, I’m not proud, but you do what you gotta do). After another five minutes of agony, intense breathing, mounting panic and grunted reassurances of, “it’s just gas pains honey, Mommy’s going to be okay,” I was well enough to drive again, and collected my big girl from her party. Once back in the car, I experienced another, much milder episode and then managed the drive home.
Home. Safe and sound. Things seemed to settle down in the “gas pain” department, and I was able to get the girls and myself off to bed without incident, around 10:30 p.m. I fell asleep, relieved that these waves of pain were behind me although the elusive burp (and/or well, you know, the other method of releasing excess gas) still hadn’t occurred.
Ah…sweet, sweet slumber. Until about 12:30 a.m., when I was woken from sleep by the most intense and longest episode of chest pain of the night. Feeling worse lying down, I managed to stumble to the bathroom where I panted and breathed and moaned out of earshot of my children. Finding no relief there, I came back to bed and lay propped up on pillows to try to encourage this gas bubble to vacate my innards, all to no avail. Finally, after what seemed like 20 minutes, the pain ebbed a bit, although I still had a persistent sharp pain in my back and between my shoulder blades. By now, I was truly afraid. My earlier fears of a heart attack came rushing back, and I decided to consult Dr. Google on my iPhone.
Turns out, there are about 150 reasons a person might experience agonizing episodes of chest pain, ranging from the disgustingly banal (gas) to several that can be dire and fatal. Most advice suggested that any chest pain that was bad enough to wake a person from sleep would merit a visit to the nearest medical professional. Not satisfied, I decided to ask a Registered Nurse for advice. I held off calling my sister in Toronto and my friend a few blocks away, both of whom would be sleeping and would certainly be freaked out by a 1:00 a.m. call from me asking academic questions about intolerable chest pain. So I settled on Alberta HealthLink.
The nurse listened, asked a lot of questions, and then calmly advised me to call 911.
CRAP.
I really, really didn’t want to call 911. Why? Because I was embarrassed. I could just envisage these busy EMTs showing up to find a pyjama-clad overreacting woman suffering from gas. I could also envisage being whisked away in an ambulance with two scared little girls left alone in their beds upstairs. Neither scenario was comforting. In the end, it was the nurse’s admonition that convinced me: “Ma’am, if you are having a heart attack, we don’t want your two little ones to find you in the morning, and we don’t want you leaving them alone forever. Will you please call 911?”
So I called. And they came.
Three very kind and courteous EMTs found me waiting for them in the living room, wearing my jammies and wrapped up in a blanket, propped up in an awkward position on the big easy chair, trying to find the least painful way to sit. I explained my pain as being restricted to my “upper abdomen”, to which the paramedic replied, “you say abdomen, but you’re gesturing at your chest.”
“Well, it’s all from the diaphragm and up,” I said.
“So, chest pain then,” he replied.
“Yes,” I admitted meekly, “chest pain.”
They hooked me up to the ECG, and I knew the moment of truth was at hand. All would prove normal with my heart, and the pains would be pronounced to be gas. A waste of time and scant emergency medical resources.
Except it wasn’t.
Actually, my ECG was abnormal. OHMYGOD. I did have a heart attack, I thought.
That was when they asked me to come to the hospital with them. I called the girls’ dad and he beelined over to take care of them. Luckily, amidst all the commotion, neither of them woke up. I was loaded into the ambulance and brought to the hospital.
Once at the hospital, a second abnormal ECG caused me to freak out even further. My blood felt like ice in my veins and I began to script in my head how I was going to tell my Dad, my sisters and – worst of all – my daughters that I’d suffered a heart attack.
Thank goodness the doctor came in at that point. He advised me that my heart, although displaying an abnormal tracing on the ECG, was perfectly fine. It turn
s out that I have what is called a right bundle branch block: a completely benign electrical glitch that I was most likely just born with (a later conversation with my Dad confirmed this. When I said, “I have this weird electrical thing with my heart,” he glibly said, “yeah…we always knew that” – crap! I wish I had always known that!)
s out that I have what is called a right bundle branch block: a completely benign electrical glitch that I was most likely just born with (a later conversation with my Dad confirmed this. When I said, “I have this weird electrical thing with my heart,” he glibly said, “yeah…we always knew that” – crap! I wish I had always known that!)
In the end, after some blood tests, an X-Ray and an ultrasound, the doctor informed me that although I had not suffered a heart attack, I had been the victim of another nasty and painful attack…the gallbladder attack. And then all the pieces fell into place. When my mom was about my age (early 40s), she was rushed to the hospital with what she thought was a heart attack, but turned out to be a gallbladder attack. That moment in the car, when I asked myself if I was having a heart attack, was remarkably similar to my own mother’s experience. Also: it turns out that gallstones and the attacks that often accompany them are indeed hereditary.
So that was that. I had gallstones but no infection, so instead of emergency surgery I was sent home with a purse full of Tylenol 3s (literally, they gave me a dozen of them) to manage the pain, and instructions to get a referral to a surgeon. This week, I got my appointment. Mid-march I will see a surgeon and will then be placed on what I hope is not a long waiting list for gallbladder surgery. In the meantime, the pain has dulled but still endures. It’s my understanding from the doctors in the ER and my family doctor that the pain will likely persist until the offending organ is removed or — and the prospect of this causes me to wake screaming in the night — I will have another attack.
So now I am on a strict diet of mostly fruit and vegetables, and absolutely no fatty or fried foods (sure triggers for gallbladder attacks). As I look with longing on slices of gooey pizza and french fries, I wonder if the last fried food I’ll ever eat was a maple dipped donut from Tim Horton’s. *SIGH*
Scary stuff! I hope that you get the urgery before another attack strikes. Stay away from those donuts!
Heaven’s knows it’s bad. I had one after eating two big servigs of my mom’s eggplant parmiggiano.
I have had vicious food poisoning, an emergency appendectomy, two labours drugless till 8 cm, none of those things hurt as badly for me than this attack. (well, maybe the first pregnancy labour pains walking the halls of Women’s college pausing every 3 minutes for 4 hours).
The gall bladder attack caught me around the same time of night as you, the pain was so bad I vomited (and I have a pretty decent threshold for pain), that had never happened to me before. I thought I was going to die right there on the bathroom floor.
My GP told me to fast on clear liquid for 2 days (I thought she was insane, I had rarely ever skipped a meal being Italian it’s practically a sin) but after the first 24 hours I felt much better and I had lots of time to think about a lifestyle change.
I have kept a pretty clean diet ever since. So far so good fingers crossed.
Wishing you feel well soon!
Idas
How terrifying, Kath, but I’m so proud of you that you seem to have dealt with this in such calm and collected manner. I think I’d have been curled up in the fetal position crying very early on in your story. My mom had gallbladder surgery when she was around the same age I am now, and I remember her telling me that the attacks were worse than labour.
Take care of yourself and best wishes for a speedy surgery consult and recovery.