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 hear 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.
Get checked immediately chest pain and vomiting are signs of a heart attack
You have medical. Get checked out. Said the guy who hates going to doctors / hospitals. Be safe.
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.
Kind of sounds like a magnesium deficiency. My buddy had that exact same thing happen to him. Got really weak too.
Get it looked at soon, for sure!
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
Ironically, if your situation is “Urgent”, you do not go to an “Urgent Care”. Its a misnomer.
I had chest pains and the Urgent Care I went to just told me to go to an ER. I’m like… 🧐 they didn’t have blood tests lmfao. “Urgent” Care is for flu and like ear infections, not for a fucking heart attack or gasterointestinal problems.
Edit: It turned out to be fucking anxiety. Lmfao I hate myself. I was on my parent’s insurance so they covered most of it.
Glad you went. I worked with a healthy young guy, he was like 26 at the time, and he had a heart attack on shift. It can happen to anyone.
Oh and the lovely hospital made him wait hours to be seen because they thought he was too young for a heart attack.
I mean in case you missed it, I said it was anxiety. They found nothing from blood tests, chest x-ray showed nothing. The “chest pain” was just my anxiety. So in hindsight, I could’ve just skipped all the trouble if I had known… 🤷♂️
Yeah I caught that. I’m just saying I’m glad you went even though it was “nothing”. I do not go to the doctor when I should.
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
Do urgent care instead, if that’s an option where you are.
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
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.
So, are you still alive?
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.
Welcome to like more than 50% of the world.
This entire fucking planet is a dystopia.
Medical debt in the US is an unsecured debt. You won’t be thrown in jail or any impact on credit if it takes you forever to pay it off. Go to the emergency room and ask for a payment plan when the bills due. Then, do what you wish with the first sentence I wrote.
or any impact on credit
Unfortunately I think the regulation that would have made that the case was stopped by the Trump administration
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/26/nx-s1-5406799/cfpbs-medical-debt-credit-report-lawsuit (arc)
Doesn’t look likes it’s passed yet, but that isn’t good news.
Sounds like heat illness. Did you sleep too hot?
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.
RIP I guess. Hopefully you don’t reincarnate into a poor girl in a third world country.
At least poor girls in third world countries have free healthcare. Not good but free
Found the American… 🥴
I am in the US
Nice work, detective.
When you remove all that is impossible, whatever remains, must be the truth
Username checks out