maybe this is my now or never

Women can have subtle symptoms indicative of a heart attack. And women's heart attacks, or heart challenges, are usually very different than men's.

In 1995-6, I had a series of heart attacks that I did not recognize as heart attacks at the time. I would feel a lot of chest pressure and then I would vomit, the pressure would be gone and I forgot about it. this happened at least three times and these episodes would begin while I was seated, doing nothing.

In the past couple weeks, maybe longer, I keep having serious pain in my upper left arm. At first I thought I have pinched a muscle or propped my arm in an uncomfortable position while typing on my laptop, which I often do in bed. So I ignored the arm pain.

I have also noticed very subtle heart palpitations, so subtle that I tell myself I am imagining things.

And, of late, sometimes I feel just fine and am able to walk through my life feeling well but, now and then, I can suddenly become so deeply fatigued that I feel I can barely walk.

Today, I had some books due at the library on the next block. I felt so weak that I used my shopping cart to haul a few books one block. By the time I got to the library, I was sweating profusely, my clothing feeling soaked and I was so weak I kept stopping to rest every few feet.  I had intended to keep going, walking another half mile to Trader Joe's, but I just could not do that much moving so I just came home. A two block walk and I stopped to rest several times, stopped to rest in the lobby of my building before taking the elevator up.

I entered my apartment, dropped off my coat right inside the door, rolled my cart out of the way and just about fell into bed.

Yesterday, walking to the bus stop after a great session with my writers'  group, a four hour long session that was still going when I left to catch a certain bus, I got out of breath and when I got to my bus stop, I noticed faint heart palpitations, I could heard my heart thumping and my shirt pulsed from it. Again, I told myself it was nothing.

Then the arm pain was back today, coupled with the intense fatigue and the sweats.

I have been thinking each time I have had any such symptoms "the next time it happens, I'll call my doctor". So I did. I asked to be given an appointment. My doc not in the office today but I talked to a doc for a good amount of time. She concluded as I knew she would that I needed to go to an ER.

I told her I didn't think I had enough energy to get myself to an ER and asked if tomorrow was good enough. She said "I am recommending you go to an ER right now. I don't think you should wait."

I don't want to go to the ER.

My arm pain has spread a bit, now it goes from the middle of my left upper arm to my shoulder and towards my neck. I am reclining, so resting. My glucose levels have been fine all day, for I have been closely monitoring them.

When I feel unwell, I always think it is about my diabetes but this is not about my glucose levels of insulin needs. Being a diabetic puts me at a higher risk.

I asked this doc, who I have never met, if I couldn't just be referred to a cardiologist and make an appointment. if I go to the ER, they'll keep me there for hours and end up telling me to see a cardiologist.

I'm not going to an ER today. We'll see if I feel like going tomorrow. I doubt it.

I am hearing friends and doctors warning me that if I don't take care of my health, my quality of life can be lowered quickly.

I am not at any real danger of a clot, for I am on an anticoagulant.

I don't even have someone to give as an emergency contact. That's one aspect of gong to the ER I hate. I have a couple Berkeley friends who would drive me to a hospital right now, if they are not tied up. But I don't have anyone who cares if I live or die or live in debilitated health condition.

Maybe it's my karmic time to go.  I feel too sick to get dressed, go out in the cold and get to a hospital. I feel too sick to be in an ER for hours .They don't monitor my glucose, telling me it's up to me. If I need to eat, the ER I use will not give me food, telling me to self manage. I just don't want to deal.

I am hearing my mom singing, in a snotty sing song tone"
nobody loves me
everybody hates me
I guess I'll go eat worms.

Good old mom. She would say that to me if I voiced any kind of unhappiness of displeasure, mocking me. When she sang that, I felt great shame and even humiliated, like I was a freak to be unhappy. And I was ashamed that my mom mocked me.

My mom was not cut out to mother. I cannot recall a single time in my childhood when I was distressed and my mom responded with simple kindness. And if, goddess forbid, I had to stay home from school, perhaps because I was vomiting from a flu birus, my mom would park me on the sofa in the living room, put a tray table with water at my side and tell me she had lots of work to do and I could not bother her. She also forbid me watching TV, telling me letting me watch tv would encourage me to fake being sick. And with my mom, you were only sick enough to stay home from school if you were active vomiting at the time you had to leave for school. If I had a fever, she said I wasn't sick enough to stay home.

When I was allowed to stay home because I was sick, mom would disappear into the basement for the whole day. We lived, then, in a huge house. The basement was also huge and had been converted into a rental unit, with oak floors, drywall. It did not feel like a basement at all. A full kitchen, full bath. Our laundry room was down there, and our mangle. My mom used to mangle clothes instead of irioning them until her mother's hand-me-down mangle died.

I suppose she had a lot of laundry, with, when I was seven or eight and home propped up on that sofa, she had four kids, a husband and herself. So laundry. She wouldn't even come up and offer me lunch. She said if I was sick, I would just vomit whatever I ate.

So I hated being sick. Staying home sick was like being bombarded with loud torture music, and the music was telling me "nobody loves you, not even your mom, eat your worms".

My daughter almost never got sick. She hated to miss school, especially when she was still in Waldorf. Once, in h.s. she stayed home sick. Her prep school had all day food buffets that came with the fat tuition My sister subbed there one day and she said the food was amazing. But one of the very infrequent times my Rosie felt unwell and felt she had to stay home (I don't remember her eve vomiting from the flu -- from an eating disorder, yes, later on she barfed sometimes but mostly she purged with laxatives or just starved). Rosie would get very painful menstrual cramps and a few times, she was in so much pain she wanted to stay home. My kid hated staying home from school so she must have been in pain.

So this one day in h.s. (she only went to h.s. for two years, then started college at sixteen), she tayed home. Probably from her painful cramps, for which her pediatarician actually gave her prescription painkillers. But a teenager likely didn't tell her chums at school she was home because she was doubled over from cramp pain. I don't know what she told her pals. But when she returned the next day, her friends teased her about staying home. All of them had two working parents and staying home sick meant staying home alone. Rosie had never stayed home alone while sick. On those rare days when she was sick, I waited on her all day, bringing her cups of tea and, now and then, pieces of toast to try to entice her to eat something easy.

When her schoolmates teased her for staying home, they said "Why not just come to school You ca strech out on a sofa, get tea from the cafeteria and be sick here.

She said "My mom brings me cups of tea to my bedside. I love her bringing me those cups of tea."

I might be having a heart attack and I have no one to tell. My kid doesn't care. A college dance teacher, someone she knew for two years and few classes because Rosie's eating disorder was roaring and it got too hard for her to dance. Wendy Shifrin was athe dance instructor, who sure looked anorexic.  Wendy died recently and Rosie posted something on her memorial page. She keeps in touch with such tangential ties in her life but has disowned me.

It is so hard to believe I have any value when my child, to whom I gave and gave and gave, and sacrificed quite a lot financially and work-wise for, would not care to know her mother might be having another heart attack.

I wish I would fall asleep tonight and not ever wake up. So I am defnitely not oging to the ER today. I will give my destiny a chance to take me out tonight. Maybe I'll go tomorrow but I don't think I will. We'll see.