I Thought I Was Dying. It Was Just GERD.
It started with pizza. One huge slice of supreme from Dough & Co. That’s how my Friday began. Well, that and the blissful ignorance of thinking my body could handle anything I threw at it. Later that evening, I went to the Mainframe Studios open house with Sam. We nibbled on chips and salsa. Then came dinner at DZÔ Korean BBQ: fried chicken, chicken fried rice, and a lychee lemonade cocktail—basically a dream meal. Until it wasn’t. The pain crept in like a bad Yelp review. Around 7pm, I started feeling a dull ache in my left shoulder. I’d heard enough over the years to know that left shoulder pain could be a sign of a heart attack. I did what any rational adult would do: opened Google and spiraled. At 8pm, the pain expanded to my left chest, then the center of my chest. I couldn’t inhale deeply without feeling like someone was jabbing me with the blunt end of a chopstick. (Yes, chopsticks. Fitting.) By 10pm, I was lying in bed, watching TikToks and trying to convince myself it ...
