I'm fine - really!

So last night was my turn to go to the emergency room. I was at the Kerry Meetup with Angela and Vanessa and started getting sharp pains in my left arm and what felt like indigestion. I had just eaten a cheeseburger and fries very quickly and just thought I ate it too fast. Angela and Vanessa, on the other hand, thought I was having a heart attack. I tried to convince them that I was fine, but they wouldn't hear it. Angela kept saying that she had just seen on Oprah how women, especially younger women, don't even realize they are having a heart attack when they actually are.

Needless to say, once the meetup was over they wanted to take me to the emergency room. I ended up making a deal with the ladies - we would try to find a hospital but if we couldn't find one within 15 minutes I would go home, get on WebMD.com and read the symptoms that women have when they have heart attacks, and if the pain hadn't stopped by the time I went to bed I would go to the hospital. We drove around and couldn't find a hospital in the allotted time, so I insisted I was fine and we went back to my car. Angela rode back with me to make sure I was okay and kept lecturing me all of the way home about how I shouldn't just blow the pain off and care about myself enough to go to the emergency room. The pain in my arm was gone by the time we got to Angela's house and I knew I was going to be fine.

True to my promise, when I got home I began looking up on WebMD about the heart attack symptoms of women. Vanessa had already e-mailed me an article she had found, so I read that and what else I could find. Sure enough, the ladies were right and I was having symptoms typical of a heart attack, but I was still convinced it was just indigestion. Brad said, "If you need to go to the emergency room, I'll take you. After all, I owe you one."

Then the pain in my left arm returned. Something that Angela had said started to come back to me, "What does a pain in your left arm have to do with indigestion?" Everyone else's worries were starting to rub off on me, though I was still convinced it was nothing. Karl called after he heard what happened. He told me to take an aspirin, but we didn't have any. He was on a crusade, "Okay, then I'm going to get some aspirin and I'll be right over." I told him I would go get some if it meant that much to him and not to worry about me or come over. After Karl and I hung up Karl called Brad (who was sitting right next to me) and told him to make sure I got some aspirin. So Brad insisted on going with me to the store.

Doubts were starting to set in, and I was remembering my promise to Angela and Vanessa. On the way to the car, my left leg began to ache too, so I asked Brad, "Do you have your keys?"

"No, I thought you were driving to the store."

"I was, but now I think we need to go to the emergency room, just in case."

I had remembered earlier that my father had had an "episode" when I was young. I was at a friend's birthday slumber party and Mom had called to tell me that people were going to be talking and I might hear someone saying that Dad had had a heart attack, but he hadn't so I shouldn't worry. He did have some chest pains and went to the doctor, but the doctor couldn't find anything wrong. I had to find out how old Dad was when this happened, so I called home. Dad answered the phone, but of course he said, "Oh honey, I don't know, but your mom will." So I talked to Mom. She couldn't remember exactly when it happened except that it had been on her birthday, but between the two of us we sort of guessed he was around 35. But, she said that it wasn't a heart attack and the doctor never did figure out what had caused his chest pains.

I got to the hospital and signed in. The on-call nurse took my blood pressure, temperature, and history. He took me immediately back to the ER (no waiting in the waiting room as Brad had done a few days earlier) and had me put on a gown. The doctor came back and did some more preliminary tests. I told him that I thought it was just indigestion but with the pain in my left arm thought I should get it checked. He said that it's a common misconception that pain in the left arm is a symptom of only a heart attack. The pain in the arm is apparently the brain displacing the pain and not due to lack of blood. Any problem with the central organs can cause the brain to think the problem is in the arm instead of in the chest.

The doc told me they were going to do an EKG to measure the activity of my heart, a chest x-ray to see if my heart was enlarged, and some blood tests to check my enzyme level, which shows whether or not there had been any cell damage to my heart, and a test to see if I had had a blood clot in my lung, which the doctor said the symptoms didn't indicate but he'd check anyway as it was a risk in women who take birth control. He was also gave me an aspirin and something to help with acid reflux.

After about three hours and some entertainment from Brad, I was feeling much better but still had a bit of an unsettled stomach. A new doctor came back to give me my results. She told me that the earlier doctor had expected everything to come back fine, but that wasn't quite the case. The cell enzyme test came back as "indeterminate," which means it came back as neither positive nor negative. She would have to call my regular doctor to see whether she recommended I stay overnight and get more tests or to just follow up with her in the morning. (This was after the ER doc asked why I didn't go to my regular doctor when this happened. Uh, because it was an emergency, hello?) The official diagnosis - "Atypical chest pain."

News came back that I would just have to follow up with my regular doctor this morning (as I suspected). So as soon as I get done typing this I will have to call her and see what she wants me to do. I'm still convinced that it was just indigestion and that there's absolutely nothing wrong otherwise, especially considering how much better I felt after I took the acid reflux pill. And Erica said this morning that any time they have tests at Planned Parenthood that come back as indeterminate, it almost always means there was just a glitch in the test and everything is fine.

I know that I was very dismissive of comments and concerns from everyone last night (Angela, Vanessa, Karl and Brad). I do appreciate that you were all concerned about me and my health. Deep down though I really knew I was fine, but I suppose it didn't hurt to get it checked out just in case. I'll keep everyone updated on my follow-up visit to my doc, but I'm positive it's nothing more than a false read on the blood test. Thanks again to everyone - it's nice to know I'm loved. But can I say I told you so yet?