June 12, 2019by Brooke Davidoff
I was reading a text message from one of my best friends when my symptoms began. She typed that my husband and his 23-year-old girlfriend told everyone in the restaurant we all worked at, that they were celebrating Myles (our son) and I were gone. She was already spending the night at our house. We were only two days and one state away from him and our life as a family.
I broke into a cold sweat. My bottom jaw was tingly and numb. My left arm felt weird. I was having chest pains. The AC was on, but our Tucson hotel room was hot, it was July. A wall stands in the middle of the room where the bathroom and closet is located. The AC unit was clear across the room from Myles and my side.
I was right all along! I was not crazy. He had been lying since spring. She was why he stopped coming home from work a few nights a week. She was why he got the desire to be re-tested for HIV himself. He had not been re-tested since I was diagnosed in 2010.
We had just returned from dinner, and I thought I had food poisoning. My mom and I shared a dinner, and she was fine. My mom told me to lay on her bed and asked again about my symptoms. I told her I was having chest pain, numb lower jaw, cold sweats, dizzy and left arm funkiness.
She called 911 and said, “Lay down.” I heard the operator say, “911, what’s your emergency” coming from my mom’s phone. She responded, “We’re in a Days Inn Hotel in Tucson. I think my 38-year-old daughter is having a heart attack.”
Myles stood in the corner staring like a puppy in headlights. Not long after the call, I heard sirens outside. Myles opened the door and six hot paramedics walked into the room holding an EKG machine and wheeling a gurney into our room. Paramedics lifted my shirt to put lead stickers all over me to attach me to the EKG. They printed wavy line results, and I was informed they did not like what they saw. I was assisted onto the gurney.
They wheeled me out of our hotel room and down the hallway into the elevator. I was pushed through the hotel lobby to a waiting ambulance. They hooked me up to oxygen and gave me a baby aspirin and nitroglycerin pill. They attempted to get an IV in my right arm unsuccessfully a few times as we traveled down some freeway. I told the paramedic to try my wrist where my best veins are. Blood was running down my arm and all over the man trying to locate a vein.
I watched out the backdoor onto the freeway looking at cars wondering if they knew I was living my own Lifetime movie. My son and I were in the process of moving across the country to get away from my husband. This ambulance ride was not planned. It was getting in the way of my escape, and I was afraid to be inside it. Escaping domestic violence feels like you’re in your own movie. Your fight or flight is on overload and everything is scary.
Intake was a blur. I had a chest X-ray and was wheeled into the ER soon after Myles and my mother walked in. I was taken to an operating room to have a stent inserted into my leg and up in an artery. Myles and mother were shuffled into a waiting room. My procedure room resembled the C-Section one. It was freezing and full of women doctors and nurses. Somehow, I got out of my clothes and into a hospital gown, I was given pain medication through my IV and don’t remember the rest of that night.
I was told I saw Myles and my mother to say good night before they ventured back to the hotel, but I do not recall this. I’m sure they were both in shock and scared to death for me. My mother saved my life twice in one week in two states. I was moved to the cardiac ICU where I was given my own room. I was hooked up to a zillion cords and monitors with an IV in each hand. Sleep was easy because I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I was awakened every few hours to have my vitals checked. I was fed sodium-free food and laid in bed watching the news. I was informed my heart attack was stress related and was advised not to talk to the person who stressed me out. I was also told having HIV increases chances of having a heart attack. I was cleared to leave after two nights and one and a half days in the ICU.
According to a 2016 article on Web MD, “New concerns are cropping up, such as a risk for heart attack up to two times greater than for people without the AIDS-causing virus…those increased odds are seen even in people whose virus has been suppressed to undetectable levels in the blood with antiretroviral drugs.” Stress along with HIV makes positive people more susceptible for heart attacks, no matter their age. I have since learned that I inherited a heart condition. Dr. Matthew Feinstein explains, “Plaque buildup happens 10 to 15 years earlier in HIV patients than in people without the infection.” At the time of our road-trip, no doubt my stress level was high, and I was still recovering from a miscarriage in June.
The next morning, I walked laps around my hospital wing hooked up to an IV hat rack on wheels. I was the youngest person ever on that floor. I watched hours of CNN and learned that Sean Spicer was out and Anthony Scaramucci was in. The White House staff turnover rate was like watching an episode of political musical chairs.
I am young enough to change my eating habits and try to exercise regularly. Staying alive and being healthy are not the same. It was horrifying to think in the aftermath what would have happened had my mother not been there. No way would I have ever thought to call 911 myself. I am now on more pills daily; I take more heart than HIV medications. My advice is, “Don’t ignore strange medical symptoms because not all pains go away. Some actually lead to death, and tomorrow is not promised to any of us.”