A Day in Life

I lay in bed, awake, when I shouldn't have been. I had gone to sleep early, very tired, but now - according to my cell phone/alarm clock - it was 2:17 AM, and my body & brain have decided to awaken - a good 3-4 hours ahead of schedule.

I hate when this happens because now, if I stay up, my sleep schedule will be out of sorts tomorrow. ...and I still don't really know why I awoke. Ok, I was a little sweaty - easily remedied by pulling off the top cover. That done, roll over to get comfortable again, and see if I can't get back to sleep...

Sigh. Now it's 2:30 AM...and my brain is still online. Damnit.

I rise from the bed, trying to be careful not to disturb my wife's rest, and venture as quietly as the creaky old wooden floors in the house will allow to our bathroom. I sit and think a bit...about yesterday's visit to the hospital, and the good news I was given there...it wasn't my heart.

In the past few weeks I've been experiencing some mild, but recurring pressure/pain symptoms in my chest...just to the left of my sternum...and given my extra weight, high blood pressure, and family history as risk factors, had been growing more concerned about my heart's health. The symptoms were mild enough that I could easily ignore them, but persisted enough that I couldn't really forget or ignore them altogether either. It nagged at me.

Yesterday, I found it very hard to awaken and really rouse myself for the day...it sorta felt like I was dragging an anchor for much of the morning. Also, the pressure I felt in my chest seemed worse. I decided to mention this to one of the medically-oriented people at our church, and ask if I really should worry about this, or if it was just another little sign that like the old wooden floors at our new home, I was just getting a bit older and a bit more creaky myself too.

I had spoken with the wife of a dentist at church prior to the start of church services, who was a General Practitioner herself, and related my symptoms. Her words at the time were: "Go to the E.R. and get checked out. Go NOW." We had other plans for the rest of the day, but with her words, I put those plans in to the mental wood chipper, and told her we'd go this afternoon - after church. She wasn't thrilled at all about my delaying it - even for the hour or so that the rest of church would take. I felt sufficiently stable to risk the rest of church before upsetting my wife's plans for the day with the unwelcome interruption of an E.R. visit, but with the doctor's words at church, it really wasn't prudent to do anything less.

As soon as church ended, my wife, Barbara, pulled me aside, saying essentially "Ok, what's going on? Something's up, I can tell. Spill it." Sometimes it's really good to know anew just how smart and perceptive the lady I married is.

I told her about the symptoms, and doctor's words, and our changing plans for the afternoon. She was nearly quite upset that she didn't know about any of this until I told her the symptoms were so slight/mild that I barely worried about them myself, until the doctor at church told me to go and get it checked NOW. She was sufficiently mollified at that...so we decided to go back home first, call my doctor and find out what hospital they'd prefer we use to get my symptoms checked out.

After speaking with the on-call doctor from our Physician's office, we expected that I could be admitted for an overnight observation (as is often the case for a "chest pain" case we were told)...or at least that the rest of the day was going to be shot by going to an E.R. at all.

Barbara drove me to the E.R., and about half way there she gave voice to our shared fears, saying quietly to me "You're not allowed to go anywhere yet." It's amazing how we can sometimes find the strangest ways to say that we love each other.

I was seen promptly by the E.R. staff ("chest pain" being one of those "magic words" in there), and after the blood work, ECG, chest X-ray and all were speedily done, the E.R. doctor who saw me said: "Your heart seems fine - the cardiac enzymes are right where they should be, and the ECG and other test results thus far give me no reason to suspect you have any emergent cardiac issues to be concerned about right now. The chest pressure/pain you are reporting is likely due either to a muscular issue, or possibly even something like Pleurisy, so I do want you to follow up with your doctor in the next few days or so, but we can safely let you go home now."

I breathed a huge sigh of relief, and both Barbara and I suddenly felt about 10,000 times better than we did a few short hours earlier. It was only a little after 3:00 PM when we were walking from the E.R. to go home. We even still had a decent chunk of Sunday left to enjoy together. Life was good again.