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I'm currently in the hospital for a heart muscle infection (myocarditis), AMA!
EDIT: AMA is over, thank you so much for this opportunity, its been great fun answering your questions, i'll be sure to do this again some time if anything exciting happends! Tazul97 signing off.
My not so short bio: Hey /r/IAmA! first time posting here.
it all started with me getting sick, high fever, sweating while feeling cold, and really bad sleep. i slept almost all day, only waking up to have a bit of drinking yoghurt just to fall asleep again. at about midnight i wake up and finally i feel like i can move around the house, i sit down at my computer and start to play the Titanfall 2 campain (really fucking intense 100% recommend to anyone who enjoys FPS games)
around 3 hours into the game i start to feel my chest starting to hurt, i dont think much of it and continue the game for about 2 hour more. the pain kept increesing and i started to get worried, my chest kept getting heavier and it became harder to breathe, i wake up my girlfriend who's sleeping about 2 meeters away and she calls a medical guidance thing we have here in sweden. they suggest that i go to the healthcare center in the morning as i had an appointment there anyways plus the hospital is 10 miles away from where i live. i then lie down to sleep for a few hours even tho my chest hurts so much.
i wake up a few hours later and i go to the health care center. they do some tests and tell me to go home and take a painkiller.
later that day the pain comes back, we call the medical guideance thing again and they suggest we drive to the hospital this time.
we finally reach the hospital and they do some tests and send me with an ambulance with lights and no sirens on to another hospital the ambulance must have atleast gone in 150 KM/h (speed limit here is 110) and the road was very icy and snowy but the drive went well.
at the other hospital they put me in some surgery looking room with tons of doctors and a huge TV which would monitor different stuff about me.
this is the scary part
they tell me that they will put a string through my wrist, up the arm and into my heart in one of my blood lines, they come up a long bit but had to abort, my arm started cramping and was holding onto the thing they'd stuck inside my arm. they struggle to pull out the string and then the doctor finally says; "think about something nice and take a deep breath"
i now know that shit is about to go down, they pull the instrument out by force and it is the worst pain i've ever imagined
and it doesnt stop there, they decide that they need to go in again since they didnt get the information they wanted, but this time they will enter through my groin and up towards the heart. this time it doesnt get stuck but it still hurts this time, not as bad as the first time.
they clean up and put me in a room to rest, im not allowed to move my head, right arm and leg for at least 4 hours.
i fall asleep in that room and then later get woken up by the doctor who tells me i have "myocarditis", at first we thought it was a "myocardial infarction" but aparently this is a lot better, its gonna heal on its own and doesnt really require any treatment, just rest. they hook me up to some machine with cables all over my chest, its a small portable device so i can have it hanging around my neck and move around with it, al tho they recommend i stay put.
1 day later they transfer me back to the first hospital by ambulance again and i get a new room to rest.
they keep doing occational blood pressure tests, blood tests and i have this device around my neck still so they can monitor my breathing, heart rate etc in real time in another room.
and here i am, 1 night after that and ive got this laptop so i can atleast browse reddit and stuff. they say im atleast gonna stay untill monday but could be longer.
My face and the device around my neck in my hand: http://imgur.com/a/rFyUu
Tazul9776 karma
im gonna get fully restored once this is over, think of it as a cold but for your heart
Tazul9739 karma
Thank you, it'll heal by itself in time.
my favorite type of pizza is a "geos special" it has tomatoe sause, cheese, ham, french fries, kebab meat and white kebab sause!
Tazul9741 karma
they actually came into my room as i was dressing up because of my increese in "stress", i dont wanna know how they'd react to my heartrate if i were to be jerking it :p
Mur__Mur6 karma
Thanks for sharing your experience! Did you immediately know the chest pain felt different than anything you'd had before?
Tazul972 karma
the chest pain felt like someone was slowly stacking weights above my heart, pushing down on to my heart. additionally the pain started to spread up to my jaw, behind the eyes and to my stomache, i also had a huge headache from before as i had the flue.
at first i though nothing of it, but after like an hour of constant pain i started wondering wtf is going on and got worried.
hope it answers your question!
AuntGunter3 karma
Hey! I had this disease too! Why i haven't tought about AMA inner mumbles... Hope you get well soon my friend. My question is; Did your doctors believe you? I mean, i am 18 yo and doctors who checked my said, my heart shouldn't be aching etc etc, i was mistaking it with chest/stomach ache/pain. So did they just directly believe you that your heart/chest ached/felt in pain?
Btw in my case my results was x300 of the standarts, stayed in hospital for 2 weeks and rested at home for 10 days no connection to outside everything was banned, that month sucked tho... My doctor planned to take me to intensive care, the one that where everyone sleeps...
Ninja Edit: Mine was myopericarditis
Tazul972 karma
at the healthcare center which i visited before the hospital they said that the chest pain could be because i had a fever, but then when we went to the hospital they checked for the worst first so props to the hospital!
Buscemi_D_Sanji3 karma
Yo, that sucks... I don't really have a meaningful question, I just think it's really amazing I'm talking to someone on the other side of the world and I hope you recover quickly! I'm American and I love the show "welcome to Sweden", as well as a lot of the metal bands from Sweden and Norway. So my question would be, since you'll be incapacitated for a while, what are your favorite shows and music? Good luck and feel better bro!
Tazul975 karma
thanks a ton! it means a lot! :)
My favorite bands are definitely Dragonforce, iron maiden and metallica, i do enjoy general house and dance music as well. and i generally like anything 70's to early 2000's music. at the moment i really like this song, it makes me smile every time :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8v6cZ21vlc
My favorite shows would be stuff like breaking bad, walking dead, game of thrones. my girlfriend downloaded westworld for me so i'll be watching that in the hospital, i heard its good.
Tazul972 karma
generally the most common way to get this is if you take some drugs like cocain if i remember the doctor correctly, or if you excercise while being sick. i dont know if going up and down the stairs, moving christmas stuff counts as excercising but i started to feel it when i was up at 3 am playing the Titanfall 2 campaign (its fucking amazing 100% recommend)
wife_of_bmacnz2 karma
My (now) husband had this when we were in high school. He has the scar from the Swan-Ganz catheter.
Hope you heal up quickly! Did they put you in the kids or adults area?
Tazul972 karma
probably adult, havent seen a single person below 50 other than the staff. im 19 btw
betsyboo222 karma
Can you tell me more about the groin part, please?
I'm scheduled for a catheter ablation (burning cells from the inside of my heart by going in through my groin) on Wednesday to fix a skipped beat and I'm crapping it. I've never been in hospital before so my imagination is running wild.
I hope you're back on your feet soon :)
Tazul972 karma
have you ever swallowed a string or a long hair but not all of it and tried to pull it back up? thats the best way i can decribe how it felt.
if you cramp then its gonna be worse when they pull out, worst pain ive ever had. but it wasnt long lasting, just a second or so. it'll be alright mate, just stay calm, its the best thing you can do.
Theshizat2 karma
Hello, im someone who has been in and out of the hospital many times the past 2-3 years so many in fact that i stoped counting after 5 cuz it started to depress me...so my question to you is what did you do to make your stay bareable? How was the hospital in general (do you live in Canada or the States?) And how was the staff...these are questions im allways asked but ive never had anything to compare them to
Tazul972 karma
im actually swedish.
i generally look at livestreams on twitch, check reddit occationally and such, aparently this post blew up when i wasnt on reddit so i kinda missed all the comments :p
Necoras1 karma
Do you have any metallic surgical implants? Pins, screws, dental implants or the like?
Tazul972 karma
i have a small metal string behind the top front 4 teeth to prevent them from moving around. ill keep it for like 20 more years if i remember correctly.
Soren_Ellys1 karma
Hello, there. Wishing you well, and hope you feel better.
That said, is the immune system and everything alright? Like were you compromised?
And for the string, was it like a fiber cable or anything?
Tazul972 karma
im not sure, but they said that they would release some particles from it or whatever and see how they flowed through my heart and by that determined what was wrong with it.
StopSendingMeNudePMs58 karma
Has the heart muscle been weakened? Will this affect your physical activities? Also, if you have a viral chest infection in the future, will this muscle be more susceptible leading to complications?
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