The story begins with me setting at my desk in my little office working. I'd forgotten my cell phone at home, in our new Explorer, so I'd only spoken with the hubby once or twice. I didn't feel good. It was hard to say exactly what felt bad but suffice it to say that I felt blah and a little bluck. I began to feel a sharp pain in my left breast every few minutes. It lasted a few seconds and repeated pretty consistently throughout the day. Huh, I thought. That's strange. And very uncomfortable. Ladies, I believe you'll understand when I say that there's absolutely no reason this week for me to be having any kind of pain in my breast. Absolutely none. I didn't think a lot of it. I prayed that it would go away. If it was something caused by stress, I asked the Lord to take away the stress. If it was a physical issue, I prayed that God would make me aware of what I needed to do.
As I prepared to leave the office, the pain turned into a dull, throbbing ache in my upper left chest. Hmmm, I thought. That's strange. I didn't like it. It was uncomfortable and unpleasant. It lasted a few seconds and repeated at fairly regular intervals. During the drive home, I felt only what could be described as a heaviness in my arm. This is why people say be careful what you wish for. It kind of solidified in my mind what I needed to do. This was much harder to ignore than the other pain. So, when I got home, I made the arrangements and soon hubby and I were off to Ashland to the ER.
When I arrived in the ER I said that I was a certain age and falling apart. When they heard "chest pain" they immediately put me in a wheel chair. I asked the young lady who pushed me around if she would come home with me and provide the same service at no cost on a residential basis. She would not sign a contract indicating such. Anyway, they took me to a room, gave me some nitroglycerin, hooked me up to a bunch of stuff, and then basically ignored me for two hours. Like I said, I got star treatment. I'm sure if I hadn't been complaining that my heart was about to explode they'd have let me sit in the waiting room for a couple of hours. When I got there, my blood pressure was running something like 140/90. Very high for a woman who's pregnant blood pressure averaged 100/50. They gave me the nitro patch and that kind of evened things out although it seemed to intensify my nausea and amped up my headache by about 4000 percent.
Sometime after that, about 3 days later it seemed, they moved me to a room upstairs and allowed me to have something to eat. This was about 11:30. I couldn't eat after midnight because of testing to be done the next morning so hubby ran out and picked me up a salad because I'd had nothing to eat since lunch. I scarfed down have the salad then we went to sleep. I complain a lot about my hubby but he refused to leave me, even though I encouraged him to go home for the night.
Throughout the night I was awoken so that blood could be drawn and an ekg could be done. I had an iv in my right arm but that wasn't good enough so they drew blood from left arm. By the time they were done I looked like I'd been on a 5 day heroine binge. (Not that I know what that looks like or anything.)
The next morning I went down for a stress test. They asked me if I was in really good shape. If so, I could jog on the treadmill. I was finally able to stop laughing about 10 minutes later and got on the treadmill to walk not jog. I told them once during the test that they were killing me. They didn't believe me. The doctor in the stress test area said that there were a few odd things on my test. Their importance would depend on what the images of my heart looked like. The nurse in the room thanked me for making her feel tall. I said I was happy to oblige, it's what I do. One guy kept calling me Mrs. Crum. I finally demanded that he stop that. When I was being returned upstairs, he wished me a good trip using my given name.
Finally, about 1:30 the heretofore unseen cardiologist came to see me. All of my tests, the stress test, the pictures, the xrays, the cardiac enzymes, the cholesterol and blood pressure were fine. He said that there was absolutely no cardiac reason for my pain. He suggested acid reflux (outside of being pregnant, I can count on one hand the number of times I've had heartburn in the past decade), stress (what? I'm not sure I recognize that word), or too much caffeine (I refuse to accept that as an excuse since I rarely have pop or chocolate in the house and don't drink coffee). Apparently as a 29 year old woman with no history of drug, alcohol, or tobacco use, little in the way of a medical history, only slight obesity, with little family history of heart disease, I have little chance of having any kind of heart disease of my own. They didn't really recommend anything for me. I think they just told me to leave. I did agree to give up the alcohol and tobacco only if they'd agree that I could keep the butter, salt, and cream. Suckers!
I believe I went into that hospital with a problem. I believe that I had enough good, faithful people praying for me that God took care of whatever it was for whatever reason he has. I don't know the reason, but I'm thankful for it and I'm thankful for the people who prayed for me. I love you all.
While driving home, hubby suggested that the cardiologist was wrong. Had I not just purchased shoes he might think that was the reason but since I had just made a major purchase, see the previous post, he thought something else was to blame. He diagnosed me and presented a possible treatment option. He said that I would need a heart transplant. My heart as become hard a cold. Like this...
1 comment:
I was VERY worried about you missy!
You are not allowed to do something like this ever again!
I love you guys =]
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