Back in December I had a heart attack.
Initially I thought I was having a weird Covid thing, but it was a classic heart attack. I live in a city, Santa Fe, NM, where we have many wonderful cardiologists. I actually wound up with a cardiologist I already knew socially, lucky me.
At the time, I was hesitant to go the the ER in part because I was concerned that the Covid crisis might mean I couldn't be treated properly. Fortunately, my heart attack occurred in a lull in Covid. And yes, I was treated very well. Got a stent. Spend three days in the hospital and went home in excellent health.
And even though I live in New Mexico, where Covid is currently more or less under control, I do sometimes think about, What if I had another heart issue and needed to go to the ER?
= new reply since forum marked as read
and, I absolutely love the Santa Fe area.
I'm envious, but we'll be back. (As full time rv'ers, we are all over the map)
It was a great choice.
When I realized my marriage was coming to an end I visited several parts of the country to decide where I wanted to live. I checked out part of the Pacific Northwest, mainly Oregon, and then the East Coast. I was in the incredibly fortunate position to move wherever I liked. I did not have a career, having spent some 25 years as a stay at home mom, and so I didn't have the kinds of limitations many working people would have had.
I had been to Santa Fe several times earlier, attending the summer program at St. John's College. I have often told people that Santa Fe kept calling my name.
I have had the good fortune to live in various parts of the country in my life. And while I absolutely do not want to disparage someone who spent their entire life in one place, I honestly think that living in different places has given me an advantage. I was born in Utica, NY, and when I was seven years old we moved some ten miles north to the small town of Holland Patent. When I was fourteen my mother moved to Tucson, AZ, with the five kids still at home. My older brother was in the army at that point. My father was an alcoholic who was becoming more abusive, and Mom realized that she had to get us kids out. She was a nurse, and knew she could find work wherever she went.
Mom become a touchstone for me. I realized that she rescued us. There was a lot of sacrifice involved. Back then, in the early 1960s, nurses did not make very much money. Mom took on every additional shift she could get. Sometimes I didn't see her for several week at a time, because her normal shift was 3pm to 11 pm, and when I got up in the morning to go to school, she was sound asleep, and had left for work by the time I got home. Plus, of course, whatever overtime she worked.
In my sophomore year of high school, I had a Saturday babysitting job, obtained through my high school. There had been a notice in the morning announcements about the position, and when I signed up I was discouraged because there were at least five or six students ahead of me. A few hours later I got a call from the school office, offering me the job. I will say that the school was very aware of my family's constrained finances, and had already scholarshipped our book bill. Anyway, the job paid three dollars for the day, which is not as dreadfully small an amount as it seems now, since this was in 1963, so is more like thirty bucks today. But here's more to the point. My mom drove me to their house in the morning, and the mom of that family drove me home. Most of the time i requested we stop at the nearby grocery store so I could buy food for the family. I recall the mom being astonished. She could not imagine her babysitter doing that. Bur our family's finances and food were so precarious that I could not imagine doing otherwise.
Honestly, I am hardly the heroine of this story, just a participant. This story is mostly about my amazing and courageous mother, and only trivially about me.
had the classic left arm or chest pain. Over a week she went from lightheaded and dizzy to nauseous. At the end, she just collapsed and died in my dad’s arms on the bathroom floor.
We thought she had a mild stomach bug. At no time did we consider getting medical help. I still kick myself to this day. 
don't blame yourself.....I would not think that was a heart attack either, and we Americans, we always take cost into consideration when health issues arise
Be kind to yourself - exercise and watch what you eat. 
