Well, I don't want to go back to a hospital for a very long time. On Wendesday morning I started feeling "not right". My heart didn't hurt, but it didn't feel right either. I let it go for a few hours, but it didn't get any better. So, around 10:30 I decided to go to Northwestern Hospital.
My timing was excellent at the hospital, there was only one
other person in the ER waiting room. And if you say "heart problem" I
think you jump to the from of the line anyway. In the ER they took some blood
and put in an IV tap, which is a needle with a value on the other end so they
can put stuff in you or take blood out of you in a hurry. The IV tap is really
annoying, they won't take it out as long as you are admitted. I told my story
to a nurse, a resident and, eventually, a doctor. When the doctor was there I
had bit of a racing heart which they caught on a heart monitor. I think that is
why they wouldn't let me go home. I was told I had to spend the night and have
an echocardiogram in the morning.
After a couple of hours in the ER they moved me to the
observation wing to stay the night. That was very boring, just lying there for
ours on end. Fortunately, Jonnell was there to keep me company that helped make
it less boring. Also, I got to watch the Sox game on TV, which ate up 3 hours.
Hospitals need WiFi networks, that would of helped pass the time better than
bad TV.
One good thing is they didn't wake me up in the middle of
the night to check my blood pressure, which never was high BTW. At around 9:30 in the morning a nurse (I think) came in
and stuck 10 stickers on me for the stress test heart monitoring. The
echocardiogram machine is a heart ultrasound machine. They take 5 pictures of
the heart resting and the same 5 pictures after being on the treadmill. The
tech taking the pictures kept jamming the ultrasound head into my side. After 5
minutes he told me I needed an injection of some stuff to make my heart show up
better on the ultrasound machine. So I did that and I guess it helped the guy.
The stress test part uses a special treadmill. It can do
lots of incline. When I got to the end of the test, the treadmill was at 15%
incline & 4.5 MPH, which is relatively
hard. After I got done with the treadmill, I had to run back to the bed by the
ultrasound machine for the "after" pictures. The after pictures were
harder to do, it is hard to hold your breath on command when your heart is
going 180BPM.
In the end, the doctors said there wasn't anything obviously
wrong and maybe I should cut back on caffeine a bit. I am dreading getting the
bill for this little misadventure.
I kind of felt the same way after returning from my family's annual Outer Banks vacation. In my case, though, I think it was the 36 hours of no sleep, combined with the caffeine pills washed down with Diet Mountain Dew.
I'm glad you're OK.
Posted by: George Tokarski | October 18, 2005 at 07:31 AM