Let me just jump right in here. I spent all day yesterday and into this morning at the hospital.
About a week ago, I started having chest pains. Really intense and then very dull. Very up and down pain, but still constant. I was also getting very flushed and part of me would randomly go numb. It would come and go and I really hoped it would just go away completely. But yesterday I woke up feeling very flushed and not well. I knew I couldn't just pretend this wasn't happening. Since we changed insurance when Chris got his new job, we hadn't yet chosen a primary care doctor. I spent most of yesterday morning at work calling around to doctors to see if/when I could get in. Most of them did not have appointments until March and the earliest I could find was Monday. I knew then that I couldn't just do nothing. I emailed Chris and told him I was going to go the ER. I decided that the best thing to do was to have my mom come and take me. I am 30 years old and still need my mommy more than I ever have. I am not afraid to admit it. I knew that the day would include lots of waiting and waiting is not one of Chris's favorite things. Plus, I knew that there was nothing anyone could really do by sitting and waiting with me. So, my mom left work right away and so did I. She came and picked me up from my house and we went to the Urgent Care that is less than a mile from my house. We waited for about an hour there. They took my blood pressure and gave me an EKG. The nurse told me that with my symptoms, she really could not treat me there. They wanted me to go the hospital and wanted to take me in an ambulance. That was the last thing that I wanted to do, plus she said that even going in the ambulance would not get me seen by the doctor any faster. So, I had to sign a waiver so that my mom could take me to the ER, which we did right away. The first couple of hours were eventful, because I went thru triage, had blood drawn, chest xrays taken, another EKG and got an IV put in. Then, they sent me back to the waiting room to wait for a bed. 11 1/2 hours later, I was taken into the ER and given a bed. This was actually this morning around 12:40am. Chris had came straight to the hospital from work and my mom eventually left at 11:30pm. She wanted to stay, but I told her to leave. I was worried about her being so tired and having to drive all te way home. After I was in the bed, they hooked me up to all sorts of machines to monitor my heart and blood pressure. They gave me medication thru my IV that lowered my heart rate and blood pressure quickly. I felt much better when my blood pressure was low. I had suspected for days that I felt bad and had pain when my pressure was up and when it was lower, I felt better. But by being on the monitor and getting the medication, we could see that specifically. But I still had that dull constant pain in my chest. The doctor wanted to see if there was a dissection of a blood vessel in my heart, so he sent me for a CAT scan. My first CAT scan and boy was that strange. The CAT scan came back normal and that was consistent with two EKG's I had already had. I was so relieved. I got so scared that some REALLY was wrong. Not that severe hypertension isn't something REALLY wrong, but a tear in a blood vessel? That seems a whole lot worse to me. But it was fine. They took more blood and compared that the ones taken earlier in the day (actually about 12 hours earlier) and said it all looked good too. They gave me some ibuprofen thru my IV and let me rest for about an hour. Then at a little before 5am today, they told me I could go home. The doctor gave me a prescription for blood pressure medication and told me that there really isn't a reason for the intense spikes in my blood pressure over the last few days, but my blood pressure is "the only abnormality" that I have, as far as these symptoms are concerned. He said that once my pressure gets regulated with the pills, the pain should go away. I managed to sleep for a few hours this morning, but I can't sleep all day or I will never get on a regular schedule. Before I left work yesterday, I scheduled myself off for the rest of the week. Going thru all this has been so traumatic for me. But honestly, it was the wake up call that I needed. Nothing else seemed to work in the past. Today is the start of lent and the start of a new me. I am not just giving up soda for Lent, I am giving up the old me. I don't want to die. I don't want to have a stroke. I want to live a long time. And to do that I need to make changes. I am still really out of it and tired to go much further with that, but I know that I need to change and I will.
But damn, thank God I am alive.
Oh, the title comes from this exchange between me and the nurse once I got into the ER bed:
RN (
sarcastically): Have you been waiting long?
me: What do you consider long?
RN: Um... 14 hours?
me: Then no, not long.
