Things happen.

Two weeks ago I was driving home on the freeway from a mini-flute choir rehearsal, and at about Rosecrans, started to feel lightheaded and nauseous. Also, I started to cry.

I wasn’t in the fast lane (hello, Prius) but I didn’t think remaining on the freeway was a good idea, and so, having missed the Rosecrans exit entirely, decided to get off at Inglewood.

I pulled into a gas station, turned off the car, and sat there.

My Apple watch heart app was kind of going crazy, and I was definitely feeling weird. I know “weird” is not that descriptive but what was happening to me was weird. I texted my husband and told him where I was and why, and he wanted me to come home, but something didn’t feel right.

Let me say that I have had this “weird” feeling before, but not when I was driving. I ignored it those other times, and eventually, it went away.

I sat for a few more minutes, and then I decided to go to Urgent Care, which I knew was nearby.

At Urgent Care, I was checked out by a PA who had an accent a little bit like Mare Sheehan of East Town. I think her name was Jen. She sent me to the lab for some bloodwork and hooked me up to a machine to check out my heart.

When I was at the lab having the blood drawn, I realized I had become my dad. This is based on the corniness of the conversation I had with the technician:

“So, you must be an expert at this right,” I asked.

The tech looked at me and smiled (I could tell by her eyes). “Of course I am,” she said.

“Because let’s be honest, nobody wants their blood drawn by a beginner, right?”

It’s possible my dad would have done that with more charm, but whatever, I was still freaked out that I was even there in the first place.

Jen told me that she wanted me to go to the ER because my heart rate was kind of erratic, and she wanted them to monitor me for awhile. She told me that I could get in my car and drive up the street to the ER; apparently she had assessed that I was well enough to drive. Why the ER isn’t within walking distance to Urgent Care is curious to me, but she seemed confident that I could do it.

When I got there, I had to wait a little while, and I also had to pee. Though the ER waiting room wasn’t crowded at all, for some reason my brain decided to skip past reading the sign on the door, so I ended up in the men’s room, which I only realized upon leaving (it was empty) because my eyes focused on the urinal. A woman waiting outside in the hallway looked at me funny, but whatever, dude, it was clean and empty.

When they got me into a room at the ER, I was helped by a very sweet male nurse named Ty. Ty hooked me up to the heart monitor and showed me how to change the channel on the TV (a baseball game was on); I found the Food Network. He explained everything that he was doing, and he spoke with me in exactly the way you want an ER nurse to talk to you. When Ty’s shift ended, another male nurse named Dave, also very sweet, took over. I think I hit the lottery with nurses that night. (Later when I went back to the hospital for an appointment with the cardiologist, I went to the ER and wrote a note about both Ty and Dave, and thanked them for the way they took care of me that night.)

I watched the show “Beat Bobby Flay,” listened to the goings-on in the rest of the ER, though Dave told me it was a slow night, and watched the heart monitor fluctuate, for about 3 hours. One of the tests they gave me was to see if I had indeed had a heart attack. Dave said if I’d come in the night before, I would’ve had to wait a really long time for a bed. I’m glad that didn’t happen.

After a while, an ER doctor came to talk to me. He looked at my test, and determined that I had not had a heart attack. He wasn’t as cool as the nurses, and he made a couple of statements that, when later I met with a cardiologist, turned out to be false, but I don’t think he was a heart specialist and so I am not holding it against him too much.

Since then, I have been outfitted with a heart monitor that I am going to wear for a month, and prescribed medicine. The doctors don’t seem panicked, and though I am worried, I don’t think I am either. There is certainly a history of heart stuff in my family, but I have also been extremely sedentary and possibly not eating the healthiest diet (though a month ago I had my cholesterol checked out and though it wasn’t perfect, it didn’t make anyone cry).

I’m almost 50. I made it a long time without any medical emergencies.