Ask Lemmy

USA, USA, USA!

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

RIP I guess. Hopefully you don't reincarnate into a poor girl in a third world country.

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.

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.

Go to ER.

In the US, they are required to provide care for actute condition (meaning chronic, aka: along term conditions like cancer or diabeted can be legally ignored), so if you are about to die, they are required by law to stop you from dying.

Worry about the debt later. Or just ignore any invoices/bills... they can't seize anything if you have no assets, debt is gone in 7 years.

Edit: If they ask for your social, say you forgot. Don't provide anything other than basic name, birthday, gender, that sort of stuff.

Do you have any chest, arm or back pain? Do you have a pulse oximeter?

Can you go to a minor ER? If you hadn't said your heartbeat was off, I would say not necessarily a big concern at this point, but this also sounds similar to what happened to a friend of mine with an aortic dissection.

She thought it was food poisoning at first, finally went to a minor med, they refused to treat her bc her and sent her to the ER ASAP. She ended up in the hospital for several weeks.

Seek medical attention now!

Your life is worth much more than the price for emergency care <3

Seek medical attention now!

Taxi to ER. No medical office will touch you having complained of, even mild, chest pain and a weird feeling heart. Been there, done that. Walk in the ER talking of chest pain, and say that first!, they will throw you in a room and attach an EKG. Been there, done that.

I don't mean to alarm you, but taken together those symptoms smell like a mild heart attack. By some voodoo I don't understand, the EKG can tell, even if the event is not happening in the moment.

I say no medical office will touch you, but first time my doc sent me to the ER, second time they whipped out a portable EKG. Times change, I may be wrong.

Do urgent care instead, if that's an option where you are.

Urgent Care vs. ER

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!

Might be a heart attack

So, are you still alive?

Sounds like heat illness. Did you sleep too hot?

Can you ask somebody to drive you?