What a faker!

So it's been a really long day today. I was up late last night working on a few things for school and I fell asleep on the spare bed in the office. I laid down for "just a minute" and the next thing I knew Mike was waking me up about 8 this morning. He said that he'd decided not to go to work and that he wasn't feeling too great. I started to go back to sleep and Mike started telling me about this pressure he was feeling on the left side of his back. I felt his pulse and asked him the standard "Are your fingers numb? Do you have radiating pain?" questions. He wasn't in pain - he just "didn't feel right." I gave him my bed and went out to the living room. I grabbed the doctor book and told him that I was going to try and make him an appointment with a doctor. He didn't want me to. I told him to take a nap and we'd see how he felt in a little while.

He must have been a little more worried than he let on because he called me into the bedroom shortly after and said if I found an urgent care place, he'd go. So we loaded up and headed to the closest one I could find. We got there and they took him right back in. They talked to him and poked around on his chest a little bit - took his blood pressure and whatnot. The P.A. student declared him her first "medical mystery" of the day. The doctor came in and said that he thought we should to the emergency room. He didn't necessarily think it was anything serious but they didn't have the proper equipment to do a cardiac work-up to make sure.

So, we loaded back up and drove the short distance to Our Lady of the Resurrection hospital. We went in and told the registration lady what was going on. The triage nurse came and whisked Mike off to the back right away and I was left out front to fill out paperwork. I wasn't prepared for the violent reaction I had to the E.R. I hadn't been too concerned but as soon as I walked into the E.R. and they took him away from me, I was sick at my stomach and shaking. It didn't take me long to fill out the paperwork but by the time I got back to his E.R. room, he'd been stripped down, hooked up to a cardiac monitor, inserted with an I.V., they'd taken blood for his first set of cardiac enzymes, he'd seen the doctor and they were doing an EKG.

I spent the next few hours on the verge of tears. Mike kept looking over at me and saying, "Stop worrying." But it was definitely not something I had any control over. The whole E.R. atmosphere is not something I can deal with anymore. It literally gave me hives. Left-over reaction from visiting my mom in the hospital, I suppose.

My only complaint with our visit was that nobody came in to talk to us at all. (Well that and the fact that we didn't have a tv in our room to watch while we waited...and waited...and waited). Nobody checked on Mike, nobody gave us any blood results, nobody came and said "This is what's going on." After we'd been there a couple of hours, a Polish lady came to pick Mike up to take him for a stress test. This really freaked me out. A stress test wasn't something I'd expected and I followed along. They hooked him up to the cardiac monitoring stuff there and prepared him to get on the treadmill. Nancy happened by and I struck up a little conversation with her. I asked her what the stress test was going to be monitoring exactly because I hadn't expected them to do it and I was kinda freaked out about it. She said that the test was a good sign. If his cardiac enzymes had been off, they wouldn't have done this test. They were going to put him on a treadmill, get his heart rate pumping and see how his heart performed under the "Stress." Hence "stress test." I felt much better, although not at ease. I chatted with the nurses and the cardiologist while Mike did his work out. My anxiety must have shown a bit because when it was done, the cardiologist said that everything looked great.

We went back to the room, where we sat for another loooooooooooooooong time. They hadn't hooked Mike back up to the monitoring system, which I took to be a good sign. Finally the doctor came back in and said that his stress test was good and that he was going to do a chest x-ray. Provided that came out clear, Mike would be good to go. I took a moment to go out and make a phone call. When I came back in, they'd taken the x-ray and we were just waiting for results.

Fast forward.

Finally the doctor came back in and said that Mike had big lungs - and that they were clear. No problems there. He said he didn't know precisely what had caused the pressure but it wasn't his heart or his lungs. Most likely some sort of muscle strain or spasms. He'd send the nurse into take out the IV and send us home.

Fast forward some more and we're on our way out the door. Mike's feeling better and he's fine. We went into the E.R. about 10 am and left after 3 pm. I am still a bit of a wreck. I'm exhausted. Too much drama!

Oh, and file this under "funny but true." In the E.R. they have a board on the wall that lists the last name of the patients they have and the room number they were in. Kurczewski was right there in Room 5. And in room 10? Somebody named Piekarski. I kid you not. Only in Chicago. Well, or possibly the suburbs of Detroit, I guess. :D