She left me alone!!

On Sunday night I had some chest pains. This isn't the first time I've felt it, but other times I justified it..."Oh, I just drank a Dr. Pepper rather quickly." C'mon, we all know Dr. Pepper is super carbonated and I don't know about you, but sometimes it makes my chest cramp really bad, like I need to burp or something. It hurts. Other times, I thought perhaps it was from wrestling Madeline on her leash. How the hell does a forty pound puppy find the strength to yank me down the stairs and halfway across the courtyard before I can finally plant my feet and stop her? So, yeah...I find ways to make myself believe it's not a heart attack. This time though, I was sitting on the couch watching TV. I hadn't eaten anything for a while, nor had I been wrestling with a dog. It hurt really bad, but it was late and I had to work in the morning, so I went to bed. I know, I know...How dumb am I? This is how people die in their sleep. *grins* I'm still here though!


Monday morning came bright and early and I was exhausted. My chest still felt tight and my left arm felt really sore like I had worked out really hard. Not cool. I went to work. Again, I know. What was I thinking? What I was thinking was, "Man, I really need my job..." At work, I told my boss what was going on and said I might leave early to go get it checked out. By the time the afternoon came around, I was freaking myself out. Perhaps it was a heart attack. Maybe it was a slow heart attack...I've read about how sometimes people have heart attacks that last hours. Yeah, so by three in the afternoon, I had half-convinced myself that I had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. I decided to bite the bullet and go to the doctor. I called my doctor and her nurse asked what I was wanting to be seen for. I told her and she said, "We can do an EKG here, but she's going to tell you to go the hospital. If I were you, I'd just go to the hospital." I suspect she just didn't want to see another patient...Lazy ass.


Off to the ER I went. I hate the ER. There are people who are sick hanging out in there. Excuse me, but I have no desire to sit next to Typhoid Mary. I'm good. I'm full up on Typhoid here. *rolls eyes* Anyway, I go in and it's not super busy, but I know I'm going to be waiting awhile. I check in and they check my blood pressure--it was 155/100. Hmmm...A bit high. Although, I didn't want to be there and I was freaking myself out, so that was probably a large part of the problem. Then the nurse puts me in a small room to do an EKG to make sure I wasn't having a heart attack right then. She puts these little stickers all over my chest and hooks me up to a machine, which looked a hell of lot like a machine I once saw a mechanic hook my car up to to run a diagnostic check...I'm just saying. Yeah, so no heart attack at the time. As she is unhooking me from the machine, another nurse bursts in through the other door on the other side of the room. HELLO! My shirt is up! I'm not into flashing strangers unless, you know, it's for beads at Mardi Gras! The nurse who had run the test said, "Hey! You should knock!" The other one rolled her eyes and said, "No one saw anything." Really? REALLY? You did, you dumbass! Maybe I didn't want to flash her! WTF? The first nurse then leaves the room and leaves me with the mean one. The mean one says, "Well, the EKG looks relatively normal. I'm going to put you in the waiting room and if you have any chest pains, let us know. We'll take you right back then." I agreed and thought we were done. Oh no, we weren't. She then felt that it was her right, her duty as a nurse, to tell me I'm overweight and I will die from this. *rolls eyes* Do you know how hard it is not to be all, "What!? I'm fat!? Since when!?" Like I don't own a fucking mirror or buy my own clothes or see other people in public. I said, "I know. I got it." She goes on, "No, you need to realize this and do something about it before you end up dead. Being overweight will lead to a heart attack or stroke or worse." Really? What's worse than a heart attack or stroke? I don't want any of these things, but who the hell is this woman who has known me for all of five minutes to say shit to me about anything? Do your job as a nurse, take my vitals, and move my chart along to someone who can make a medical diagnosis. She didn't know anything about me at all. Does she know I've been obese since 8 months old? No, she doesn't. Does she know it's hard as hell for me to lose weight? Fuck no. It took everything in me not to tell her to go fuck herself or to mention that her super cool pink eye shadow went out of style back in the eighties at the same time her stupid hairstyle went out of style as well. *rolls eyes*


I ended up out in the waiting room with the general population. You know, no one wants to hang out there. Perhaps if I had an infectious disease I wanted to share, then I wouldn't mind it so much (Although if I truly wanted to spread it around, then I think going to Walmart at midnight on Black Friday would've been a good way to spread it. There were so many people it was ridiculous!). However, since I wasn't sick, nor did I want to get sick, it sucked balls to be out there. There was some woman on a bed behind a curtain in the waiting area puking into a trashcan. There were a couple of other people there who were coughing and sniffling. I sat away from as many people as I could. So gross!! Then some dude comes in whose coughing up a storm, like he's going to hack up a lung, and he's not even covering his mouth. OMG!! I'm going to get something, I just know it, is the only thing running through my mind at this point in time. After the guy was coughing and had thoroughly exposed everyone to the bubonic plague or whatever he had, a nurse gave him a mask. Oh really? Now he gets a mask? Wait, let him cough a few more times to make sure he's gotten everyone!! IDIOTS! Then, in the middle of everything, a balding male nurse with a limp comes out and calls for a woman. The woman has been sick and throwing up (although not there in the waiting room), so she's weak and needs to be pushed in a wheelchair. The husband asks, "Do you need me to push her?" The nurse says, "Yes. The less work I have to do, the better." I couldn't help but laugh out loud at this lazy bastard. I then made the comment, "That's the kind of nurse I want...The lazy one." Why, oh why, did I have to open my mouth? This was, indeed, the guy I got.


This guy calls me back after I've been there waiting for like three hours. I'm told to put on a gown (OMG! Those things are HORRIBLE!) and get on the bed. Once I'm settled in, lazy ass comes in and takes my vitals, asks me some questions, then tells me they're going to be drawing blood. When he came back to draw the blood, he started asking more questions. "Are you pregnant?" I said, "Nope." He asked, "How sure are you?" Me--"Very sure." Him--"How do you know?" Me--"I don't sleep with men." He raised his eyebrows at me in surprise. I said, "I'm gay. So, unless it's immaculate conception, I'm not knocked up." He stifled a laugh and said, "Well, I don't sleep with men either." I decided it was probably not a good idea to ask the man who was about to draw my blood if he was sure because he looked gay to me. He then proceeded to draw my blood and set up an IV on me without gloves. Ummm...This doesn't seem sanitary to me. I was really freaked out by the no gloves thing, but said nothing. After sitting there for an eternity, they came to get me to have me take a chest X-ray. The tech who came to get me had trouble driving...He wheeled me around on my bed and used the door jambs to help him steer. He told me, "Please keep your arms inside the bed because I am known for running into corners." Seriously? This made me think about when I was 19 and got into an accident with some friends. We rolled in a pick-up truck like five times. When we went to the ER, I was taken for X-rays on my right arm because my elbow had gone out the window and was covered in debris, plus it was already bruising...That time, the guy taking me was running through the hospital with me because they were backed up and he slammed my elbow into a corner as he cut it too close. I had howled in pain and he said, "I really hope it wasn't broken." I had said, "Well, if it wasn't, it probably is now." It wasn't that time, but man, it hurt! This time, I kept my elbows tucked in. But now can I point out how much it sucks balls to be hanging around in a hospital gown? Dude, the back hangs open! What sick bastard designed these things??? I had to stand there in the X-ray room with my arms over my head for the pictures and all I kept thinking was, "They can totally see my underwear..." Good thing I had on a nice pair and that I wasn't wearing like boxers or something. *grins* Hospital experiences are so degrading, I swear...


It took a long time, but at nine o'clock, the ER doctor came in and told me that everything was fine. My chest X-ray was clear and my blood tests were all okay as well. Basically, they couldn't find anything wrong with me. I was like, "Whew! Time to go home!" Let me take a moment to say that at work on Monday, we'd had a potluck with a nachos theme...It was then nine and I had eaten a small plate of nachos at eleven am. I was famished! I wanted to go home and eat some dinner. The ER doctor kept talking and said, "We're going to keep you overnight for observation. In the morning, they'll be able to run some more tests..." Wait, what? Phoenix smiled and I knew she was thinking, "Yes! Now we don't have to pay the $125 for the ER visit!" I was thinking, "I don't want to sleep in a hospital!" So, I stayed...It took another two hours or so for them to get me a bed, but eventually, I was taken upstairs. They had some crazy nurse come to get me. She hooked me up to a portable heart monitoring machine, which had those paddles on them to shock people. When the woman had her back turned, I motioned to Phoenix that I wanted to use them. She grinned, but wasn't down for me to shock the nurse...Eh, whatever. This woman seemed to have issues with wires. It took her forever to disconnect and then reconnect me. Then she had to move the nurse call button/remote from the bed, which she mentioned, she often forgets about and realizes it only when it catches as she tries to push the bed. Yes, these are the types of nurses and techs I want helping me...


It was 11:30pm by the time I got up into the room that would be mine for the night...Luckily, it was a private room, with my own bathroom, and a small television...It was also decided that Phoenix would go home *sniffle, sniffle* and leave me on my own for the night. Never mind that I could've been having a heart attack or that I was scared...Nope, she was going home to sleep in our bed, alone, where she'd actually get some sleep. Let us all remember this, so if she ever needs to stay in the hospital overnight, I too shall go home and get a good night's rest while she is poked and prodded all night. *grins* Okay, so I told her it was fine and to go home because someone should get some sleep, but she could've disagreed, right? lol Shortly after getting into my room, I met my nurse for the night...Yup, my nurse's name was Elvis.


Well, I have to go now because I'm supposed to do some shopping and then go to a birthday party. I'll pick up on this again tomorrow...It gets better, trust me. In the next blog, there's blood drawing in the dark, jogging on a treadmill in a hospital gown, and even EKGs while I'm trying to sleep! *grins* Man, hospitals are AWESOME!! Peace.