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!!