Today was a bust. Here’s the scoop: I rushed to volleyball (where we kicked butt in 2 of 3 games, narrowly missing a shut out by a point in the second game) and during play, I started to feel a tight pain in my chest. Before you get worried, it is nothing, but it freaked me out and I of course started worrying when it didn’t go away. I should really know better. Two years ago, I thought I had a major ulcer and it turned out that I had bruised a rib while playing.
Well, so I figured that I’d just mosey on over to the First Care place and see how my heart was acting. I was pretty perturbed as I walked into the ER and went to the triage and the nurse asks for my first name and then says have a seat. Didn’t ask what my problem was or how I was feeling, nothing. I should have dropped over in a faint right there, just to show them! You see, she was busy getting the weight and temperature of a frisky child. I figure, ok, I’ll be nice, but I’m freaking about my heart which at this point is now racing from stress. Then she calls a guy up to be weighed and temperatured and so on. Now I’m ticked. Then the guy leaves and nothing. I go up to the window and I say “Excuse me, is this the ER?” and she says “Yes” and I said “Well, I’m a little concerned because no one even asked me what was wrong.” and she says “That’s because I was with a patient. There was a line. Now it is your turn.” and she asks me all of these benign questions before even asking what my issue is. I say “I’m having a pain in my chest” and she says “do you feel like your going to throw up?” and I say “no” and she says “Well, then it’s probably not your heart”. Hello????? I think she just said that so she wouldn’t look so bad, since she didn’t ask what was wrong with me. Is SHE a cardiologist? Is she qualified to make these determinations upon a two second inspection?
So they take me into a room and tell me to strip, but I don’t all the way because the robe is short and there is a window into the room, looking into the busy hall and the minute I lie down on the gurney, they are going to see my ratty underwear. (Remember what your mother always told you? It’s true. The one day I don’t wear sparkly bright white underwear because I’m having my period is the one day I have to go the emergency room)
This Boy Scout comes in and I learn that he is my doctor. I tell him that I was playing volleyball when it started and he says “At school?” and I say “um, no” and he goes “Where?” and I say, “um, at a bar?” and he says “How old are you” and I say “29” and he nods. Bless his little heart. Must be the new short hairdo or the sweaty/no makeup thing?
So they do an EKG, which was yucky because they put stickers all over you, including under your boob, and then make you lie really still and yell at you if you move (not that I know this from experience). The nice thing about this was that I had my own private TV, so I got to watch some horrible Mark Harmon thing, which was much nicer than sitting there counting the screams of the bratty kid in the next room.
Then this very cute male nurse comes in, wearing scrubs and looking like a runaway from Dawson’s Creek (which I don’t watch, but I often see commercials for it during Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I know what they look like), and he tells me that I am scheduled to wear a heart monitor that I have to pick up tomorrow. Which sucks. I don’t want to. Oh, and I have to quit caffeine. Which I don’t think is possible.
By the way, it never mattered that I put my pants back on. No one cared. I think those nurses’ just want to exert power on people by telling them to get naked. I think it makes it harder for a disgruntled patient to get up and leave on them. So next time they tell you that you have to be completely naked when you are going in because your throat hurts, just don’t.
Anyway, all I apparently did was pull the muscle that connects your chest muscle things (the muscle over your breastbone). Connective tissue, I guess. I know exactly when it must have happened too, because there was one serve where I was reaching and running backwards. Would have been a Reebok moment if not for the rampant chest pains.
So now all is well. I’ve decided to not wear the heart monitor thing. We’ll see about the caffeine abstinence. Yeah, I doubt it too.
