An Unexpected Journey Part II

Part I is here.

The ambulance arrived at RMH without incident. I hoped to see my husband waiting there for me, but he had not yet arrived.

He is an EMT himself but he was on duty with the City. He was also in a training class and I had asked a nurse at my doctor's office to contact the EMS dispatch and have him tracked down.

They whisked me into Room 10 in the ER and then transferred EKG lines and oxygen lines and other things onto the hospital equipment.

A nurse came in and asked relevant questions. They ran another EKG and asked me how I was feeling.

My chest was still hurting, I said. But not like it was.

I looked up to see my husband standing at the door. He came in while the EMTS were still hooking me up. He thanked them for their service.

He looked shaken to see me there with wires protruding everywhere.

Once things calmed down a bit, I asked if I could go to the restroom. This meant unhooking me but it couldn't be helped.

When I returned, I found my friend whom I was supposed to have met earlier in the hallway with my husband. She had offered to take me to the doctor but I had declined.

She stayed for several hours and then left, still not knowing what was wrong with me.

The doctor entered and said he wanted to do a stress test. This would be a nuclear stress test that involved injecting isotopes into the body while resting and then again while it was under stress. It would take several hours and meant an overnight stay in the Chest Pain Center of the E.R.

It was not a hospital admittance, though. I presume this is for insurance purposes.

At any rate, after that, it was all hurry up and wait. My husband finally left to go collect my car at the doctor's office and to eat lunch/dinner. It was 4 p.m. before I left Room 10 for the Nuclear Lab for my first injection.

Then I went into a small dinky room that would be my new home for the night.

After an hour there, they rolled me back to the Nuclear Lab. I lay on a huge machine that crawled over the heart area, taking pictures. That meant lying perfectly still for about 16 minutes (four songs on the radio plus commercials).

Then it was back to the room. My husband found me and comforted me until I begged him to go home and get some rest. There was no where for him to stay in that room; it was just too small.

He left me reluctantly, with kisses and promises.

The night was long, with much racket and little sleep. I'd been told I would be the first stress test and would start at 6 a.m, but that time came and went.

My husband arrived at 7:45 to find me frustrated because I still hadn't had my stress test.

It would be 11 a.m. before that happened.

The stress test involved climbing on a treadmill and bringing my heart rate up to a certain level. My blood pressure was already up so I knew it wouldn't take much to raise it.

After about nine minutes, they injected more dye. I walked for another minute. They stopped the treadmill and moved me back to the large X-ray machine. Another 16 minutes of being still.

About an hour later, a physicians assistant told me they found nothing. Nothing heart related, anyway.

That was the good news.

The bad news was they still didn't know exactly what was causing my pain, but a previous history of problems with my esophagus and reflux made that seem a likely culprit. However, that was a different doctor and a mystery to be solved on a different day.

And I came home to my bed and my shower, relieved and embarrassed by my fears.