Sherry Stewart Bosue, Living with CHF

One day in early March of 2009, David and I woke up with plans to enjoy our day off by going out for breakfast, running a few errands, and catching a movie. What a surprise when I felt a soft ball inside the middle of my chest being squeezed. I went through a mental checklist of what organ could be causing this distress, finishing in about .10 seconds. Then, I took up the strategy of denial. As the "clamping down" sensation diminished, I complained to David about the whole inconvenience of the thing and he and I decided to get it checked out instead of waiting. I took a shower and got ready. Brilliant. By the time I got out of the shower, the middle of my chest felt like a large stone had developed which was crowding my back and shoulders. My hands were tingling. Other than that, I felt fine. That's when things started going wrong.

Our local, small town hospital is famously lethal as far as serious emergencies are concerned. David and I had discussed many times that if there would be any emergency more serious than a few stitches could fix, we would tack our chances with the time it takes to get to one of Tulsa's better hospitals. In this case we thought we would be smart enough to stop briefly along the way at our local urgent care facility, just to ask for baby aspirin. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid; we didn't have baby aspirin. Stupid Stupid we didn't think to call an ambulance just for a little old heart attack but decided to leisurely go to the hospital of our choice, 45 minutes away, and stupid; the employees of the Urgent Care Clinic where we stopped to get baby aspirin.