i woke with that sharp pain in my chest again, on the left, not like a heart pain, more like a muscle except the pain is it's worst when i laugh or cough or take a deep breathe or hiccup, even... so after an hour at work i decided to go to the doctor... when will i finally just give up on modern medicine?...
no more walk in clinic, that's for sure... the doctor there spent 30 seconds with me, charged a dollar a second, and said go to the emergency room... i debated a half hour or so, drove back to work, sat in the parking lot, then drove to the emergency room... just wanting a doctor to at least listen to my chest and tell me it's not a pneumonia...
the emergency room, however, has a protocol for chest pains that costs a fortune and keeps a patient overnight... admit me?... what?... no thanks, just start your tests and i'll bail when i get bored...
so they stuck me and x-rayed me and iv-ed me and stuck a nitrogycerine patch on me and ekg-ed me and then, actually used a stethoscope... and then i took a nap for an hour or two while they processed the tests... finally, after five hours (which would have been a lot longer if i didn't insist on either being fed or seeing the doctor as it was almost 3pm and i was getting a hunger headache cuz i had nothing to eat all day... i mean, were they gonna keep me overnight without feeding me?), the doctor tells me all the tests are fine so far... so far... of course, there's more money to be made...
oh, and they gave me one aspirin...
so i sign out ama (against medical advice), which may be the only way out of an emergency room these days unless you really like spending money and getting tested... and i stopped for more halloween stuff for the kids tomorrow and i'm gonna rest a bit then go play softball...
i'm tired and achy and feeling the after effects of nitro and passing a kidney stone and giving blood and probably too much chocolate this week and whatever it is that is causing the pain in the chest (probably slept wrong or strained it swinging the bat), but i am still breathing (ouch) and laughing at my continued gullibility (modern medicine, yeah sure, just another greed machine run by lawyers and bankers {who are lawyers} and insurance brokers {who are lawyers} and doctors {who are lawyers too} cuz they either are lawyers or hire them and let the lawyers run the show)...
hello, how are you today? :)
Thursday, October 30, 2008
some days...
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sheesh ... kinda' puts the delay in communication of this internet based blogosphere world into perspective doesn't it? ...
how are you? ... really?
ah, perspective, yes, that'sd what i play with in all my time-concept babbles which are at the heart of the real time blog, but truly, it's seriously e-the-real as opposed to the real, which is practically impossible on the internet, though perhaps video teleconferencing is as close to real time as it gets, but even that is still far the real, which is, in this life, the physical world...
of course that (all the philosophizing) means i hurt like hell and am distracting myself, but, on the other hand, i am as fine as i can be when hurting like hell and in the sense of of near-death probability, i am probably no nearer death in the next moment or day than i ordinarily would be if i wasn't hurting like hell...
all the vital organs are functioning within normal parameters, except, of course, the kidneys, which haven't been normal for decades, and the liver, which is fatty cuz the body stores fat around the torso, but otherwise, same as always, except for the hurt like hell part...
it is times like these i miss a partner in life the most... well, almost the most, there are a few other times, but let's not depress me when i'm already hurting like hell, ok?...
the malaise was not related to the chest pain, which is 99.9% probably muscular (i mean, the only way to know for sure what's going on inside the body is to be inside the body and i wasn't getting cut upen today), but rather aftershock of the kidney stone passing the night before, which is par for the course and the chest pain just coincidentally occurred at the same time as the usual aftershock of being stoned...
the bottom line (oh really?... the bottom line?) is that i just got home from softball and i pitched the full seven innings, walked one, and we won 10-5, or something like that... i could barely swing the bat or field, but in spite of limited movement, the pitching was right on...
and i didn't die...
so i must be ok :)
really, i am hurting, but muscles heal and the body has recovered from dozens of kidney stones (heck, i even forgot to name a few and i no longer save them all for that kidney stone necklace i was going to present to the one (no wonder she isn't coming around)...
no, really, really... i am ok, i'll hurt, i'll recover, i'll feel lonelier and lacking in tlc for a few days, but life goes on and in the end, i['m quite used to being alone, so like rudolph, this too shall pass...
i've got to be at work in about six hours to set up the haunted house for the kids, so i ought to try to find a comfortable position for sleep, if i can, and actually get some sleep...
thank you for checking in and for the really :)
really :)
Well, I hope you signed out after finding out the important tests were normal...like the EKG, cardiac enzymes, CRP, and any other imaging tests they were willing to do to you.
I am sorry you were alone for the trip to the ER; being alone in the ER sucks...a lot, if not for the anxiety than for the boredom as the medical personnel abandons you for hours on end.
Honest caring does extend across the miles, but I do hope you are feeling better and that you at least managed to get a phone number to follow up on the results of whatever else they actually accomplished...and I do wish some homemade soup was being delivered rather than reading of your opening a can.
...so I'll send hugs and hope you know and feel you really are cared about.
everything was normal and i didn't stay for the sonogram or the stress test or the overnight they offered cuz i had one a few years ago and a full stress test as well and the heart checked out a-ok fine and more and more the pain was feeling like a muscle pain...
the puzzle is in how it keeps moving from the pectoral across to the triceps and then back and forth... and how it is tied into movement of the chest and torso, especially deep breathing, sneezing, coughing, hiccuping, burping any movement of the diaphragh) and also bending and some arm movements some times (depending on where the pain is localized at any given moment...
if i find another doctor i choose to trust again (and i am not really interested too much in doing that cuz i am so turned off by the medical industry that i will no longer call it a profession), the results will be at the emergency room for review... everything was fine, within normal limits, except, of course, those slightly high liver enzymes that the fatty liver produces... same as the last eight years, every test...
yeah, i was the only solo er patient the whole day, which does suck, but thatb is life and it motivated me to pressure the nurses to contact the doctor to move me along to the next step/decision point...
and as for soup, while campbell's vegetarian vegetable is not what it used to be (too many carrots and potatoes, not enough other veggies and no lima beans or those little round things), it is still an old friend as good as any homemade soup cuz the taste buds remember the comfort in the taste, even if it tastes a bit different...
besides, i create my own soup from canned soup and it's a little different every time... tonight, i added a tablespoon of ken's valadia onion dressing, a can of 98% fat-free cream of mushroom, several different cheeses, and cheddar goldfish, reduced the rice milk content, and had a thick creamy soup the taste buds drooled for...
they'd still be lapping it up if the stomach didn't set some limits...
thank you for the consistent caring... it means a whole lot to me...
i do care yanno :)
...and that is why i will say i wish you had stayed for the full workup...however, it does sound like either a muscle pull of some sort (hopefully not a tear), or maybe even costochondritis (an inflammatory thing that happens in rib cartilage that hurts like the devil) See http://tinyurl.com/4qv7n5
Used to hear a lot of it back in the day when life was still leading me to become the doctor of my dreams....so now I'm not a doctor but I play one on....
I do hope you feel better, though. I just recently rediscovered Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable too, and it has actually become one of my favorite canned soups. I agree...too many carrots and potatoes, but their broth is very good and lends itself very well to additions.
Nice to see so many words spilling over and shared by you with your fans :)
hugs...
and
...nite
(or in your case...morning)
ok, that makes the most sense, all the symptoms fit exactly, and i did take a softball very hard to the left chest last monday night when i slipped in the beach-like sand that surrounds the pitcher's mound on one of the fields...
the lethargy and aching of the post kidney-stone day confused the symptoms and got me concerned enough to visit the er cuz i don't have a doctor these days...
so i'll live with the pain for a while and hopefully we'll still win our softball games (or not lose on account of my big weird named thing...
actually, i think it's the tietze syndrom as the swelling and movement seems to fit... i can almost squeeze the pain out of my arm and into my chest overnight by sleeping with pressure on the arm and armpit...
if only i didn't have to breath... or clear my throat... or cough... or sneeze... or burp... or hiccup... or, ummmm, move :}
yay for veggie veggie soup :)
and caring :)
i know it hurts, but do try to take some deep breaths as often as you can stand to...sometimes these types of things leave people open to other lung type problems from the shallow breathing they do because of the pain.
yay for caring...yay for hugs...yay for love...
and responding to a RealTime comment from q9 here...
...your comments and visits are definitely missed... :)
i am noticing precisely what you describe here, that is, i must eat and drink more carefully cuz the pain suppresses the cough reflex (and the sneeze reflex too) and the brochial tubes are definitely moister than usual... heck, just clearing the throat is something i do not want to think about...
excellent advice nurse j... and yay for all the yays and for all the comments for all the love :)
sleepy, must wake for softball now... am i an hour early? lam :)
:)
breeeeeeeeathe
breathing (ouch) slowly (ouch) very :)
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