A Post From Mom Brenda

Kitties – This is Mom Brenda here.  Sassy agreed to let me borrow the blog today.  I wanted to post today about something important that has happened to me lately in the hope that by posting this, other people can learn from my mistake. 

Recently, I have not blogged much because I have not been feeling well.  It was not anything specific, just minor things here and there over the last 3-4 months.  I was tired all of the time, but then again, I was not exercising much so that explained that.  Then I started having heart palpitations, but my thyroid medicine had just been changed so that made sense.  I was sweating   A LOT, but then again I live in Texas so what? 

A few weeks ago, I started having problems breathing.  I have had pneumonia a few times before in my life, so I figured, “great – this again?”  I got worse two weeks ago and went to the doctors.  They took xrays and sure enough, I had pneumonia.  I took the medicine for four days, but it just did not seem to be working……

I went back to the clinic to see if they thought the antibiotic should be changed.  They listened to my chest, and told me I needed to go to the hospital.  I reluctantly said that I guess I would drive over there later.  They informed me that no, I was going by ambulance. 

Turns out that my “pneumonia” was a minor heart attack.  I was in the hospital for almost a week. When I look at all of my symptoms put together, I had all of the classic ones.  But because I am only 51, and never had that moment you see on TV where the person grabs on to their chest and flops on the floor, heart problems just never occurred to me.  Please learn from my mistakes, it is not about age or what your current symptom is or what you saw on TV - it is about listening to your body and not making excuses!  Some of the symptoms for heart attack are heart palpitations, feeling tired all of the time, shoulder or/and arm aches (especially in women), trouble breathing which can lead to sweating and chest pain.  This is by no means a complete list, but see here is the thing,  I had every single one of these symptoms, but because I never put them together, a heart attack was the last thing I expected.   I will repeat once again because it is worth repeating:

Listen to what your body is telling you!!