flu and heart attacks

this is something i did not know untill it happened to me.

i had the flu not a bad case so mild in fact that i compleatly ignored it ...untill one night i felt bad so i went to bed early and had some wild symptoms hot and clod flashes eratic pulse delirous halluciations then i passed out for an unknown time when i woke up i felt "better" but weak very weak but i passed it off as the flu catching up with me.

the next day i was talking to a friend of mine who is a hospice nurse r.n. and described the episode and he says so what did the dr. say about it andi said what dr. i feel better his response was that if i did not see a dr. he would come up here and drag me to one.

so okay i go to the e. r. and they listen to my story just like you and say sounds like a bad case of the flu ...but we'll do one mor e blood test just to make sure, so i'm putting my clothes back on getting ready to go home and the nurse comes back in and says "lay down , hrer take this asprin , hold still were going to put an i.v. in and take this o2 mask and put it on.????

what is going on i ask she says yiu have had a heart attak so they put me in a room and all these dr's. and such come to see me and i get th idea thatthis is not going to end very good for me... liveing wiils organ donation and all this stuff they talked to me about so...

the next morning i'm in an ambulance headed for yhe big med institute in portland or. and the do a bunch of tests and a cadriac catherdization echo cardiograms and such and it come back that yes i had a heart attack and missed dying right there by a hair and now my heart does not work right the left artium is hardly movingand i have an ejection fraction of only 40% andto make things even better i will probable live but could just die for no appearent reason in the next 2 years or so they claaed it virul myocarditius and said most don't even get to the hospital ,

it is caused when a flu virus gets into your heart musle and there is no way to prevent or predict it the dr. said you have to look at it like being struck by lightning it just happens be glad you survived, and i an to be sure but 2 years have gone by now and i am srill weak and my heart is still not working properly i can have a bp of 97/56 bpm of 95 .

so for all yhe good it does to warn you this sort of thing can and does happen all the time .

mod edit: syntax

[edit on 26-1-2007 by sanctum]