The Shrine

Ran into a bad drug reaction Thursday that increased my BP, gave me heavy breathing, and overall screwed up my day. It was time-released, so I just had to put up with it until it cleared my system. Ended up with some painful chest pain early Friday morning, though given the situation Thursday, I knew my heart was just labored from the activity. A couple of Ibuprofen seemed to clear it up. Didn’t get a lot of pain through the day, and took some maintenance doses of Ibu to keep the pain away.

On Friday night, it was starting to escalate a bit more. I took a BP measurement on my left arm, and ten minutes later, my arm was getting a numbing pain throughout. Not completely numb, but enough to make me confused about the situation. Couldn’t sleep for a while, debating an ER visit, finally took some more Ibu, and got about 4 hours of sleep.

Saturday morning, woke up, pain started creeping back. Couldn’t take a nap. Started getting shortness of breath. Hot shower only made it worse and very painful, so Shellie immediately drove me to the nearest ER. I walk in sweating like crazy, chest pains, numbness in my left arm, and visibly short of breath, and this lady is asking me insurance questions, which I can barely answer. After a couple of minutes of this, I finally remark that I have chest pains, numb left arm, shortness of breath. (Didn’t have the energy to get smart with her, but I think she connected the dots to what I was getting at.) She goes back and figures out what’s up with the emergency response (they confused me for another chest pain guy that they just took in at the same time), and 30 seconds later I’m in.

About 2 minutes later (after on the bed), I’m swarmed by 8-10 people: a EKG tech, somebody asking about the timeline/history, two nurses putting an IV adaptor on each arm, people giving me way more pills than your general doctor would recommend each day (like 8 Plavix and 4 baby aspirin). The EKG tech tells me that the EKG says I’m having a heart attack. The heart doctor comes over and says it’s probably not a heart attack, and it’s just an inflammation around the heart, but we’re going to Jewish to do a heart cath and confirm or clear up everything.

Heart cath shows that my heart arteries are great, so it’s just an inflammation of the heart (or rather around the heart, officially called pericarditis). Had another episode that night, but got that cleared up. Everything had been normal ever since then and I was finally released Tues morning.

I just recovered from bacterial colitides. It wasn't life threatening of course but when it was hurting, I couldn't even get the strength to talk or stand straight. The antibiotics I took was pretty strong stuff and left me felt sick for the whole week, and the pain was unbearable if I didn't get the shots. It was like the end of MGS4 where you can go from dying to doing super kung fu moves after one shot. I think I lost like 6 pounds in one day from the vomiting and couldn't even hold down water. Also learned that coke or gatorade is easier to hold down when you're vomiting compared to water since it has sugar in it.

Sine: Wow! That must have been a scary situation. I felt lightheaded just reading about it. I know I would be completely terrified in your position before getting the results and understanding what's going on. I really hope you recover very quickly back to health.

Don, glad to hear you've recovered. I did have Salmonella once after eating something bad at a party; and yeah, it's a lot of sports-drinks for a while =P

Glad to hear your ok Sine.

I offered Shelly Pandemic, but you guys were already playing Dominion in the hospital.

Wow man, glad you're OK.

Was wondering why it was so quite here :-)

Good to hear you're fine now, Sine

Scary O_o

Yeah glad you're okay. There's nothing quite comparable to being in the heat of pain and having to WAIT and give fucking information. God I hate hospitals.

Surprised they cathed you with cardiology confirmed pericarditis, especially since your story confirmed it, NSAIDs are great for pericarditis.

Glad it all worked out, though. What do they think the etiology was?

Glad you're okay. I had a bit of a scare earlier this year when was hit with some sudden chest pain, but doctors chalked it up to stress. It was definitely caused by the combo of smoking nearly a pack a day while working ~100 hours a week and losing 20lbs in two weeks despite eating nothing but BBQ.

I've been out of that game for a while now and have been going to a gym two to four times a week for the last couple of months. I can't live like I did when I was a young'un.

Sorry to hear that about both of you guys. Hope everything checks out ok.