I woke up at 3:30am to a fire alarm.
Okay, so it wasn’t a fire alarm but, rather, an alarm clock. It was F‘s. He’d had it for several years but no longer wanted it. It’s one of those folding travel clocks, wind-up, of course. Because I collect old pre-antique things (vintage, you might say), it was a nice addition to my collection of clocks and other such devices. I had no idea I had set it for 3:30am.
When it went off, I hit the ceiling. Instinct took over. Fire? Other emergency? Blankets and clothing flew around the room, and I decided what the priorities were – get some trousers on, chuck my bug-out bag outside, go get the folks, and … wait a minute, it’s just the gods-damn alarm clock! Holy crap, did it scare me.
I went back to sleep.
An hour later, I woke up in pain. Chest pain! I took stock of the situation, diagnosed if I was imaging or overreacting due to not being awake, and established the very real and possible situation of experiencing a heart attack.
I wasn’t. But I’ll get to that later.
I spent a few minutes decided what symptoms I had, the severity, the urgency, if I could drive, obligations such as work (at a new job, no less!), and planned out my morning. I had a shower, got coffee & breakfast ready, and drove to the hospital. I told triage my symptoms. I sat for 20 minutes at reception, and then waited in a room for another 10 minutes. Someone came in and decided after a brief discussion that an electrocardiogram (EKG) was in order. These little squishy things were stuck to my torso, wires connected me through those to the EKG machine. “Looks good to me,” said the technician.
An hour later the doctor came in. He was absolutely convinced that it was not my heart. It was either stress, stomach acid reflex issues, or a pulled muscle. The jumping jacks at 3:30am were likely the cause of pulled muscles in that area. My EKG chart looks “very, very normal”.
Funny – at work just a day before, C and I were talking, and my skip-a-beat heart came up. How is that for timing?
I arrived at work 1 hour late and made up 1 hour this morning. All is good.