I am in the US, so financial calculations need to be factored in.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, felt like I was going to die, then vomitted.
Now heart beating slightly off, not feeling great but not terrible, had mild chest pain earlier in evening…
Kinda feel off. Have medical insurance with large deductible.
Ignore it? Taxi to ER? Call 911? Genuinely don’t know and don’t like 911 since police are involved.
Also I feel hot, feel burning around my neck.
> Makes thread asking if you should go to the ER
> Literally everyone says to go to the ER
> Doesn’t go to the ER
ok
Welcome to America. Where medical advice is asked to a bunch of weebs on the internet over going to the fucking hospital when you feel ill because of money concerns… I hate it here.
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America is probably the reason those other places don’t have health care as well.
Welcome to like more than 50% of the world
But it’s the bottom 50%. And, in 100 years, it has fallen to 50%.
Trending is good.
USA, USA, USA!
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Unless it’s a red state and you have a baby in your belly. Then they will absofuckinglutely let you die.
EDIT: A word
Consider going to a walk in clinic. If it’s nothing serious, you pay 100-200 and you’re on your way. If you go to the ER and it’s nothing serious, your insurance may deduct you hundreds more (my ER copay is $500 and I have great insurance).
If it is serious, the walk in will tell you to go to the ER. In that case, the insurance may waive the ER copay. While it is true they can’t deny you care, this system of expensive ER copay was presumably put in place to stop people using the ER to provide free care. Check your insurance policy (preferably before you get sick). I believe some places also have free clinics, but I would expect them to be pretty crowded.
Good luck OP. This sounds serious and you need to take care of your health. Try to find a way you can at least get some real qualified medical advice, even if you seemingly recovered this time.
Heart issues? Chest pain?! They’re not touching OP with a ten-foot frog, straight to the ER is all they will say.
You’re not wrong, but I would rather OP seek any qualified medical care than none, even if all they do is refer them to the ER.
Genuinely don’t know and don’t like 911 since police are involved.
911 dispatcher in the US here
This will vary a lot from one jurisdiction to another, I can really only speak to county I work in
But while in theory every EMS call also gets a police response, probably more than half of them the only action the police take is to tell us “not responding unless requested”
And if they do respond, a lot of time they don’t do much besides sit at the end of the driveway with their lights flashing so the ambulance can find the house easier.
Things like overdoses, assaults, shootings/stabbings, psych emergencies, cardiac arrests, etc. they do of course show up to because they may actually need to do something.
And if you live in a bigger city or rougher part of the suburbs, sometimes they may even take their sweet-ass time getting to those.
And if you live in a rural area, there’s a decent chance you’re covered by some part time or regional police department, or state police/county sheriffs who are stretched way too thin covering a huge area with maybe 2 or 3 officers on duty at any one time, they’re probably not gonna show up in a hurry if at all either.
Like I said, it varies a lot, some towns in my county I can count on police being there before the ambulance (whether or not they actually do anything once they’re there in a different story) and in others the cops don’t give half a fuck unless someone is actively dying.
If you do find yourself calling 911 though, for the love of God, don’t tell them you don’t want police on your medical call, I swear that might be the most surefire way to make sure they do actually show up in a hurry. If that ends up in the notes of the call it makes the cops think you’re hiding something or I don’t know, planning to jump the EMS squad or something, some cops can be pretty panicky, paranoid weirdos like that, or sometimes just spiteful.
some cops can be pretty panicky, paranoid weirdos like that, or sometimes just spiteful.
And this is why we never want the police involved.
Op, you alive?
Seek medical attention now!
Your life is worth much more than the price for emergency care <3
Seek medical attention now!
Yeah bro being alive is so worthy, who’s going to pay for my landlord’s vacations if I die? Who’s going to slave away 12h a day lifting heavy shit 😢 Y’all can have this life I’ll have the next one
It’s very much worth it imo. I get to kiss girls and enjoy the beauty of the world and help those I care for
This was me when I had Norovirus, though the puking was preceded by firehose-level shits until I took an Imodium, after which it switched ends before deciding on some rather unpleasant alternating events
Hope you’re doing better now. As someone who works in the medical field, it can be a real bitch to navigate everything.
For the future: Nobody here knows your baseline. If you tell any clinical medical worker you have had chest pain followed by difficulty breathing and vomiting they’re very likely to tell you to go to the ED/ER (Emergency Department / Room). Speaking for myself only, that would depend how stable I feel following the vomiting incident and if the chest pain persisted, and baseline conditions and history (e.g., do you have a history of hypertension, high cholesterol, overweight, etc.? When was your last physical exam?).
We also don’t know the full context on what you mean by couldn’t breathe and feeling like you could die. For example, did you have a major GERD / Acid-Reflux incident (could explain mild chest pain)? Did you eat something and have an allergic anaphylactic reaction followed by a surge of adrenaline from your fear of death and a panic attack followed by vomiting? Have you had sinus congestion say from a cold and a glob of postnasal drip obstructing your airways? Do you take drugs? And yes, it’s possible you also had a heart attack.
Worth noting: Urgent Care has limited resources beyond an X-ray machine, usually. The moment you mention chest pain, they’ll hook you up to an ECG to take a reading. If your vital signs are okay (blood pressure, SPO2, heart-rate, temperature) and your ECG reads no active heart attack, then they might just refer you to a cardiologist follow-up. If on the other hand there are signals of a recent or active heart attack, they will pretty much demand you get loaded up into an ambulance and send you to the nearest hospital with a cath lab (due to liability on themselves). You’ll thus be triple-dipping costs from urgent care, ambulance, and hospital when you might’ve been better off going straight to the ER.
ER will be a higher co-pay with insurance and absurdly costly without (but there are options, some ethical some not surrounding this). The good news is unlike Urgent Care, they cannot refuse treatment based on lack of insurance, if that’s your predicament. Urgent Care will.
Also when you call 911 for a medical emergency, police aren’t going to be involved. ACAB rhetoric aside, DO NOT REFUSE TO CALL 911 BECAUSE OF THIS. The moment the dispatcher sees this is a medical emergency, nearby fire departments or ambulances will be notified.
I know its late for this but you can also start with Urgent Care. With insurance it could be a fairly cheap copay. They will advise on what to do next. You could have something like the flu (i had the flu and it fucked me all sorts of up) and theyd just prescribe you some medicine and rest
Urgent Care (or possibly insurance, I can’t recall) will charge you more if they deem the situation “not urgent.”
Yea likely insurance, but it would likely still be cheaper than an ER visit
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Regardless im glad you are ok :) i have anxiety too and it can be scary
Go to the ER. As someone with heart problems herself I always say that you only have one heart so I would absolutely get it checked out. At least get an ECG workup done. Nausea and vomiting alongside an irregular heartbeat can be a symptom of atrial fibrillation which would be confirmed with an ECG. I hate to worry people but the symptoms you mentioned can also be a sign of a heart attack and the longer that goes on the more damage this could be doing to your heart. Get to the hospital ASAP!
Could be a simple case of reflux - when some stomach valve doesn’t stay completely closed during sleep and lets gastric juices and food creep upwards.
But the best medical advice is not to seek medical advice from randos online. Go to urgent care and see what they say, or at the very least lookup if there is a nurse hotline where you live and call it.
Do urgent care instead, if that’s an option where you are.
Sounds almost identical to my panic attacks. But im no dr, go see one if you don’t feel better
