Yesterday, at about 7:30 PM I called 911. I thought I was having a stroke because about 5 minutes earlier a nerve in my left temple felt like it pulsated and then my mind went blank & I forgot what I was doing, the left side of my face had begun to feel what I can only describe as like a fuzziness/TV static. These last few weeks I've been having really heavy heartbeats that almost make it feel like my heart is sore from beating. This created what I would call a sense of paranoia regarding my health, and I knew that I was paranoid, so when I had that fuzziness/TV static feeling I ignored it as my mind playing tricks on me, a nocebo if you will. But then suddenly the left side of my face started to go numb, so I picked up the phone and called 911.
The numbness in total lasted about 20 seconds. I called 911 and after about 10 seconds a man answered. I described to him everything that had just happened, as well as my uncertainty since I didn't know whether or not it was my own mind playing tricks on me due to my previous paranoia. He took down my phone number & address, but then I stopped him. I asked him how much an ambulance was and expressed that I didn't know if I could afford one or not because I didn't know if I had health coverage or not. He said he had no idea, and asked if maybe I wanted to call a friend/family to drive me to the hospital, so I said I'd do that.
I called my brother & asked him where he currently was, he was in Canada on a business trip. I told him I needed someone to drive me to the hospital and briefly (in about 4 seconds) explained my symptoms, he said he'd call some nearby family and to wait, so I did.
After about 10 minutes (Or perhaps that's an exaggeration since at this point I was a bit shaken up) he called back saying nobody was there to answer & to call 911. I expressed that I already had but then called him because I didn't know how much an ambulance was or if I could even afford treatment whatsoever (The thought of having large medical debt for the rest of my life was genuinely at that moment nearly as unappealing as the situation because all I could think was how I didn't want to become a slave for the rest of my life to my debt). He told me almost exactly "Dude, just call an ambulance, it's your health" so I said yeah and hung up and re-called 911.
At this point, it felt like I had almost entirely regained feeling in the left side of my face so when a woman answered the call I explained the whole situation, how it initially felt, my current state, and then asked if she thought I was just paranoid and that nothing was wrong. She informed me she couldn't make a medical decision as she wasn't a licensed professional. I asked her if there was any way to ask the EMT's so perhaps I wouldn't have to destroy my savings with an ambulance ride, she said the radio was only for communicating locations & situations. So I decided and said for her to send for an ambulance. She had me on hold for 30seconds ~ 2 minutes (hard to tell in this stressful situation) while she radioed it in, then she told me to wait inside in a comfortable position, to have the front door lights on, and some other general stuff. I told her I'd wait outside instead, the fresh/cold air was nice.
Before the ambulance, a truck arrived with 2 men. One began asking me questions and the other began setting up his equipment for monitoring my vitals on top of my roommate's car (Which at this point it just occurred to me, "Goddamnit I forgot my roommate existed I could've asked him to drive me to the hospital".
I went over the story with them, I also described that drinking mountain dew on some days made the heart problem worse. They asked if I had had any extreme stress. I described how I just had a game release, have been working 80+ hours/week on it, and was getting ready to start on my next project (Forgetting to add that I also have 2 part-time programming contract jobs for other games).
I don't remember if it was the older man or the younger one who said, he'd seen it before and that it was likely a stress-induced problem (stress/anxiety/panic attack). At this point the ambulance was pulling up, I noticed that it had no emergency lights flashing. This indicated to me that my scenario was one of two things:
1) After hearing that I had regained feeling they determined that I was a non-emergency case and didn't need to rush.
2) The 2 people in the truck hadn't radioed back telling them that it was an emergency so they went under the presumption that it wasn't.
Either way, seeing the ambulance's lights off calmed me considerably. I was asked about drug intake if I had had any marijuana, alcohol, off-the-counter drugs, etc. I answered no, said I may or may not have had melatonin (Sleeping pill) the night before but couldn't remember. I asked one of the ambulance driver's recommendation regarding heading to the hospital, and he said that he recommended that I relax, avoid all stimulants such as stress, caffeine, etc. So I decided to go with that option.
During this time while my vitals were being checked & while I was being questioned I had received phone calls from my dad & grandma. My grandma, I had time to answer before the EMT arrived but my dads was during so I didn't. I called back my brother & dad to inform them that I was fine. My brother's girlfriend had arrived on his behalf to make sure that I was okay. I was informed that my uncle/papa (dad's dad) had gone to meet me at the hospital since they thought I was taking an ambulance but would instead be swinging by the house to make sure I was okay. During all of this my mom had recently had her phone shut off because she couldn't pay the bill so my brother had called her neighbor (who didn't answer) and left a message for her to tell my mom about the situation, who ended up visiting me about an hour after the situation was over when she got the message.
My uncle & papa arrived, we chatted for about ~45 minutes, they told me I needed to eat better then after ensuring them I was okay they took off.
That's a long way of saying, I'm a bit paranoid about being over-stressed right now and don't want to take the mountain dew (caffeine) I usually have every morning/night to keep myself going. So there won't be an update today.
Sincerely,
Blake Gillman