Gigi's un-Excellent Adventure

Saturday I felt bad pretty much all day. It got progressively worse until I finally lay down and took a short nap before I started cooking dinner. When I got up from the nap, I felt like someone was sitting on my chest. By the time we finished supper, I really felt like crap, was short of breath and the sensation of something sitting on my chest was worse. Get where I'm going with this?

Anyway, Hugh decided that we needed to err on the side of caution, so I ended up in the Chest Pain Center in the Emergency Room overnight having serial EKGs, tronopins (cardiac enzymes), etc. to make sure I wasn't having a heart attack. Which I wasn't.

However, by the time I got to the ER, I was having true left-sided chest pain which was radiating up into my neck and jaw. The pain level was pretty low, maybe a 3 out of 10 at its worst, but was persistent, which was scarier than anything else. Three nitroglycerine tablets later, it was totally gone, even the sensation that something was sitting on my chest.

I got chided gently by the ER doc (Dr. Black is a gem!) for waiting for over 4 hours to come in when I started feeling weird. He said he would rather that I come in dozens of times (HEY! Who has to pay the bills here!?!) for a false alarm than not come in the one time I needed to and that I should let them determine if I should to be there. How many times have I preached this same matra? But I must say, if I went to the ER every time I got short of breath (did I ever mention I'm fat??) or started feeling weird, I'd be there several times a week.

Right now I'm waiting for 9:00 to roll around so I can schedule a cardiac stress test, my third in 10 years. The last one showed above average exercise tolerance for my age and "body habitus" (I have mentioned I'm FAT??). Mayhap I will pass this one with flying colors, too. We can always hope.