Emergency Room

Ugh... spent 10 hours in the ER this morning.

For the past several weeks I've been having some mild discomfort in my chest. Then last night it got much worse. Unfortunately I'm not sure how sudden the onset was. I was absorbed in a computer game, sitting in the same position, for almost four hours when I suddenly realized my chest was really tight and achy and my right shoulder was sore. I figured it was from sitting hunched over a computer for so long and so took a hot shower that seemed to fix the shoulder pain but not the chest.

I had only had a couple of sticks of celery with peanut butter for lunch and this was a little after 8pm so I thought maybe it was some kind of heartburn or indigestion from lack of food; so I made and ate dinner (steak and salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing) and several Advil to see if that would make a difference. I decided to give it an hour to see if that helped and then would go into urgent care if it didn't.

An hour later it was no better (actually a little worse) although if I was sitting up or leaning forward slightly that seemed to help somewhat. So I went online to find a close urgent care only to discover they all closed at 9pm (and this was about 9:15). I figured that if it was a heart attack I would probably already be dead and so didn't want to go to an ER or call an ambulance (especially since an ambulance would have to take me to the closest ER which doesn't belong to my provider network) and from some online research (which is always iffy for medical conditions) my symptoms seemed to match up more with pericarditis which, while bad, isn't as urgent as a infarction.

So I decided to tough it out until morning... Yah, that didn't work. I made it until 1am trying to sleep while sitting up. Sitting up it was only kind of painful but walking around made it slightly worse and laying down made the pain unbearable enough that I couldn't breath. I finally gave in and drove to the ER in Murray - a long mental battle there about driving myself. I mean I wasn't light headed or dizzy or anything but I was having an unknown medical episode; I had considered calling my folks back around 9pm when it first started getting pretty bad or perhaps a taxi (about $50 one way) but I kept putting it off and putting it off until I finally decided I couldn't put it off any longer and by then I didn't want to wait as long at it would take me to drive there as it would take for someone to drive here to drive me there. Actually, driving seemed to help a little. I'm not sure if that was sitting more upright, the vibrations of the car, or just having finally having decided to get help.

Once at the ER I was surprised how quickly I got checked in and started on (chest pain and shortness of breath seem to be magic words there) and had a very nice medical student and nurse assigned to me. When I first checked in my pulse was fine but in my ER room it had almost doubled to between 150 and 170 which was alarming. I like to think that it was because I was feeling very undressed in my hospital gown and the med student and nurse were both very cute; but more likely it was because I was now half reclined in the hospital bed which was making the chest pain worse and in the middle of an ER which is stressful.

With several hours of rest and a few drugs they managed to force the pulse down below 100. My initial ECG was all over the place as well but I think that was more because of my chronic Atrial Fibrillation. The chest X-rays, CT scan, and echocardiogram all looked normal and a second ECG about 8 hours after the first was much better. They had considered doing a stress ECG on me but after talking with a Cardiologist decided to leave that off until I could see him on Monday.

Now I'm now wondering if it might be some Clairton-D I had taken... Usually either just go without or use a prescription nasal thing for my allergies but I was out and got caught unprepared for the last couple of week when the overlap of the mold season and the grass season had most everyone's allergies going nuts and mine were really bad. I started taking some old regular Clairton I had laying around until I noticed it had expired almost five years ago and so I picked up some Clairton-D at the grocery store and had taken two of them earlier that day. I seem to remember that Clairton-D would cause my heart to race the last time I took it about 6 or 7 years ago which is probably why I hadn't used it since and a web search found that an irregular heart rates is one of it's known side effects which combined with my Atrial Fibrillation (also a type of irregular heartbeat) probably did me know good. However, it was almost a half a day since I had taken the Clairton-D before the chest pains started though, so I just don't know.

I final got released about 10am Sunday morning. My chest still hurts but no where near as bad as it was (I can at least lay-down and sleep with it). I had already scheduled Monday off from work because I'm getting my home appraised so I can drop my mortgage insurance, so I guess that worked out good. Although the appraisal is scheduled for 11am and I'm not sure can reach him to reschedule if I need to, depending on the Cardiologist's appointment that I need to call and schedule at 8am tomorrow.

I normally do housework on Saturday and was planning on spending most of the weekend making sure my place was especially clean for the appraiser's visit but that didn't happen and I don't feel much like running around doing anything just yet, let alone housework. But I imagine he will be focused on the condition of the structure itself rather than that the floors that need to be swept and mopped, piles of laundry, and general dustiness.