What health scares have you had?--Al

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), February 11, 2000

Answers

Every time I pick up a People magazine (what can I say, since having children my literary tastes have diminished somewhat)or click on Netscape search, I see an "official notice for anyone who took Fenfen,Or Pondomin..." if you don't know they were diet pills that were all the rage a few years ago, and me, being a goof of the highest order took some after the birth of my daughter Cara.My son Sam is 4 1/2 years old and my daughter is 3 1/2 years, there is 15 months between them. So, my excuse is , I was really tired of being big, zaftig, large, FAT!!! I got a prescription for 2 months and you are supposed to take them 3 times a day at meal time, well, I could maybe take 1 every couple of days, they made me hyper and zoned out and bitchy (my husband noticed a difference in me the first day!He said "Wow, what's the matter with you today you're so snippy?" )Of course I didn't tell him because I knew he'd say "Honey,you'll lose it when you're ready, I love you...." (I'm not kiddding he's a great guy!) So, I lived my little secret and lost 25 pounds lickety split or rather no lickety split,no lickety anything, I didn't want to eat anymore, food was uninteresting to me and I'm an eager eater. I kept the pills since I had 180 of them and took them off and on for about a year.That's apparently a big no- no with these pills. Anyway, I think that I may have given myself an errythmia. I definately feel it when I am stressed or have more than one cup of coffee. I have otherwise been a very healthy,active person and I am beside myself thinking that I may have unwittingly or nitwittingly given myself a potentially life threatening ailment because of vanity. I'll end up as a character in a Danielle Steel novel,'the story of 2 young children being raised by their devoted father after their beloved mother dies from diet pills'. Man oh man, does this ever play through my head at night when I look down on their sleeping forms. So, that's my story, pathetic as it is. Bye for now, I'm off to listen to my heart beating to a different drum. Kim

-- kim nelles (kim@loupomanti.com), February 11, 2000.

short story, for years i had a mild heart arrhythnmia and was taking prescrition medication to control it. i began to be short of breath and would get too tired to walk out to the car. knowing something was wrong i called the clinic answered the nurses question and was told to come in right away, that i probably have to wait until the doctor could work me in. after all kinds of x-rays, ekgs, and machines i have no name for peered at me. cardiologist told me that i had ventricular fibrillation, that the heart muscles were almost to the point of not pumping blood. i guess i should have been scared, the situation warrented it , but having made my peace in mid 1960 i was ready when called. the rest of the story is an account of what they did to make the heart go right, etc. i am doing good, i just don't run foot races anymore.

-- doug (ionoi@webtv.net), February 12, 2000.

I have been diabetic just about since the time I was born. When I was 11 I was diagnosed with Diabetic Ketoacidosis, a condition where a body produces poison from not having enough insulin to break down the sugars within the blood. After suffering from this for several weeks, one night I came down with flu-like symptoms and I called the doctor and scheduled an appointment. Within 4 hours I was having severe chest pains, I could not breathe, I could not walk. My parents rushed me to the emergency room where I was said to have been 3 hours away from going into a coma that I would not have come out of. I had to be life-flighted to the trauma center to have my system rid of the toxic poisons that I was suffering from, then the treatment to "cure" the DKA had to be taken care of. Several weeks later I was able to return home and back to a somewhat normal life. I also suffer from severe migraines and carpal tunnel, but those aren't exactly "scares" for me.

-- Meg (meghlcl@aol.com), February 12, 2000.

The most recent one which scared the hell out of me was a nasty bout of costochondritis (?spelling - beats me - it's an inflammation of the cartilage around your rib cage). I thought it was a terrible asthma attack at first, but the pain and tightness wasn't going away with my inhaler, and I was gasping for breath. I went to the doctor's office and scared them too, apparently. I almost passed out on my way down to x-ray, and I had just changed into one of those nasty paper gowns when they decided to rush me to a big hospital in Boston. You can probably imagine my dismay at wearing a paper gown, my pants, and a thin blanket while being wheeled into the ambulance on a busy Boston street. This was the middle of the day, mid- October.

They thought I had a blood clot in one of my lungs and proceeded to tell me all about it and what it could do to me. This was my first time in an ambulance, and I was all alone because my husband was at his job about 50 miles north. I think I almost lost my mind.

Needless to say, the hospital took excellent care of me while they thought I had a clot and performed some very expensive tests. It wasn't a clot, after all, THANK GOD. The inflammation caused a lot of pain, though, and kept me out of work for the next week. It could have been worse, though. I am very thankful it wasn't.

-- Janelle (JReagan6@excite.com), February 14, 2000.