Reply #137: I'm so glad that things turned out all right!

[Lisa]

Absolutely no need for embarrassment. My mom and uncle, retired from health care now, have both told me that they would MUCH prefer that a patient's problem turns out to be easily-treatable after all, than to deal with a fatality that "could have been prevented if only they had come in immediately". ("Makes for much less paperwork, you know," says my uncle -- always the tease.)

I noticed that lately the Heart Foundation has been quite concerned that gastro-intestinal symptoms are so often dismissed, when they can be an important sign (not just for heart problems either). Mom sent me a huge clipping last month, about how heart attacks in women are often undetected because they might not get chest pains but nausea/indigestion, instead.

Anyway, in my case it turned out that the dizziness and racing heartbeat were likely due to a combination of indigestion (possibly related to a virus that others in my workplace reported experiencing?), and maybe an environmental contaminant as well (something in some spilled machine oil that made me queasy as I was cleaning it up). I was just glad that I didn't have to worry about hospital bills on top of all that!

"One chemotherapy machine" for Canada -- yes, it goes with our CAT scanner, which is made of actual cats!