Overnight Interlude in the Emergency Room

This is not what I planned to write about this week.

Photo via Jennifer Garam

It started last Monday night — indigestion, bloating, and loss of appetite.

On Tuesday morning, when I reached out to hit snooze on my alarm, a sharp pain shot through my right arm, and also pressed out against my ribcage, emanating from my chest.

That day, I watched it. I watched the pain, the discomfort; I observed my symptoms with hypervigilance. The symptoms continued. The indigestion got worse. There was acid reflux, fatigue — more so than normal — a slight shortness of breath. The sharp pain remained. The symptom I worried about was the pain in my arm — that sounded familiar.

On Tuesday night at around 11pm, I got into bed. I grabbed my phone off the edge of my desk. Let me just Google, ‘Symptoms of heart attack in women,’ I thought. The symptoms are different in women, that much I knew.

A list of symptoms popped up on my phone, including:

• Abdominal discomfort

• Shortness of breath

• Pain in one or both arms

• Unusual fatigue

• Heartburn (indigestion)

A brief thought flitted through my mind: This can wait until morning. And then a louder one: I don’t want to die in my sleep.

I obeyed the second thought and got out of bed, put on my clothes, and drove to the closest emergency room.