Just Another Sunday
It was just another Sunday. June 5, 2016, went something like this:I drove my daughter to her church youth group service. I picked up my daughter from her church youth group service and went home. I did a load of laundry and a load of dishes. A friend of my daughter's came over around 4:00 and they decided to see a movie that evening. I was going to drop them off at the theater around 5:30. I decided to take a quick shower. Sounds like a pretty normal day so far, don't you agree?
After showering and getting dressed it must have been about 5:00. I smoked what has now become my last cigarette. It was 5:15. I was sweaty, breathless, light-headed. I told the girls that I didn't feel great and I was going to just lie down for a minute before we left for the theater. Then the pain started. Agonizing, crushing pain like nothing I've ever felt.
I remember yelling for my daughter and trying to get cool and trying to find my phone and trying to get a cell connection to 911 and being connected to the wrong county's 911 (I live on a border) and trying to spell my name and telling the dispatcher I'm having a heart attack and the EMTs finally arriving and the EMTs treating me for anxiety because they didn't believe I was having a heart attack and the EMTs asking me if I wanted to go to ER and the ambulance casually driving me to the hospital without sirens or lights and I remember being certain I would die.
More happened. I don't know what.
Then I woke up feeling pretty great although bruised and very confused. I had suffered a heart attack. I had a 100% and an 80% blockage in my left anterior descending artery. There are now two stents. And I have a new life.
I'm Leona, a 47 year-old single white female heart attack survivor.
Hi.
