I had strange chest pains today, and drove myself to the local hospital. Imagine the absurdity: a pre-menopausal non-smoking female in the emergency room complaining of chest pain. One who is 42 years old, but looks 35 or so. I might just as well have shown up and announced I was coming down with hypchondria.

But all my life my mother has drummed it into my head, after all the heart attacks her parents had, that I need to watch out for anything that looks remotely like cardiac illness. And my sister-in-law in the Bay Area has severe heart problems that went undiagnosed for years because they didn't "present" properly.

I wouldn't let my husband drive me; he has a "pitch" tomorrow for a children's television show that I think will be wonderful if the studio in question is smart enough to buy it. I took a book and my cell phone, and set out to make an ass of myself. (It turns out those items are the two most important things to take with you: if you have to choose, take the book.)

I was sort of hoping that the triage lady would check my blood pressure and send me home with some sort of stern words about wasting her time. But no: they drew blood, asked for a urine sample, stuck an IV needle into me (just in case) and hooked me up to a machine to monitor my pulse. The machine also took my blood pressure every 20 minutes or so, like some sort of cyborg nurse: the cuff would suddenly swell, and I was supposed to lie still until it got its reading and deflated iself.

They X-rayed me right there in the bed, and then took an EKG reading.

Everything is normal, though I was there for over four hours. (And it would have been much worse if I didn't live in such a sleepy little town.)

Eventually the nurse gave me what they call a "GI cocktail," which was supposed to make me better if the root cause were/is indeed some sort of upset tummy. I thought their disgusting potion was helping, though in retrospect the reasons I started to feel better afterward were probably 1) a desperate boredom, after I finished my book (make sure that you take something that's several hundred pages long, rather than a slim volume on the Roman Catholic liturgy)—which led to wishful thinking that the sensation was going away, and 2) the fact that I was flat on my back, and not using much oxygen. After all, it only hurts when I breathe deeply.

The worst of it is that I didn't wolf down the peanut butter protein bar I took along. (Make sure to gobble up your protein bar on the way to the hospital.) And now I've been instructed to stick with clear liquids for the rest of the evening. I'm on my second can of chicken broth, the last can of broth in the house.

I wanted to scream at them, "but don't you see? If I do just have an upset stomach, it's from not eating enough today. And now you're making it worse."

But I didn't. I'll hang on as long as I can, and when I do break, it'll be with something bland like rice. What a girl scout.

To my list of complaints about the human body, I'd like to add this one: there should be no such thing as "nonspecific chest pain." All sensations should be localized to a particular organ, rather than free-floating like this. If I have a tummyache, it should damn well feel like a tummyache."

The whole thing is probably a testament to my iron constitution: I so rarely have any kind of digestive problem that when I do it feels like the end of the world. Or at least like a heart attack.

It's been six hours. Isn't this odd?

If I ever do have a heart attack for real, though, I'll try to live-blog it: that would be cool.

Posted by: Attila at 07:57 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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