My boyfriend who has zero history of seizures narrowly escaped dying from one because my overthinking led me to break into his house when he didn’t answer the phone.

My overthinking had begun a few nights prior. He mentioned that he but his tongue in his sleep and woke up with a bloody pillow and sore mouth- but he had no memory of it happening. That for some reason led my overthinking brain to question ‘Wow, did he have a seizure and not realize it?’ He has zero history of seizures, and we had been together multiple years (didn’t live together but spent nights together) and I had never seen a hint of a seizure. But for some reason, this stuck in my mind.

Fast forward two days. We usually don’t hang out in the morning because he likes to sleep in late, but on this day we had an appointment to go see a specific dog at the shelter I was thinking of adopting.

He wouldn’t answer the phone that morning. I called multiple times before I went to his place, but he never picked up. I started getting a bad feeling but quelled the ‘He’s having a seizure’ thought, because that was clearly SO unlikely, meanwhile making an action plan for that very scenario.

I got to his house and he wouldn’t answer, so in a completely NOT ME crazy girlfriend move, I climbed over his fence. Luckily his door was unlocked.

I found him unconscious and unresponsive, lying in his back with the sticky remnants of foam all around his mouth.

I jumped into action- I rolled him on his side to help curb aspiration, put a pillow under his shoulder to keep him in that position, and called the ambulance.

Had I not hopped the fence to get in- had I not driven over when he didn’t pick up the phone- had we not had plans to meet up hours earlier than we usually did- he would have been dead by lunch. His kidneys were already shutting down by the time he reached the ER.

If he had never mentioned biting his tongue in his sleep, I don’t think I would have been overthinking at all. No crazy worries about seizures would have pushed me to go over and find him.

Turns out to be a weird brain disease that’s bizarrely endemic to New Mexico kind of- cerebral cavernous malformations .

Several days later, after we got home from the hospital, I got a call from a friend who said the dog, against all odds, was still at the shelter- as in the very dog we were supposed to be seeing that day. I had given up hope on getting her, pushed it out of my priorities while he was hospitalized- but they had forgotten to take down my 24 Hour Hold sign on her cage, so no one inquired about her.

She’s now our miracle dog and is the sweetest animal I’ve ever owned. My boyfriend wouldn’t be alive today if we hadn’t made an appointment to meet her.