Me and My Chest Pains

I woke up Thursday morning and experienced a sharp, fleeting pain in my chest, deep beneath my right breast to be precise.  I ignored it and went ahead with my routine, including 35 minutes on the treadmill despite the continuation of the fleeting pain in the same place.  Then I went to work and by noon I was in the emergency room.My first meeting of the day was at 9am and I sat beside our campus’ physician assistant.  By then, I could point directly to the spot where the pain kept appearing and disappearing quite randomly.  I thought maybe I had pulled a muscle, but decided to ask her about it.  She said I needed to go get it checked out without delay because women’s heart issues present so differently.

I hate the ER.  To me, it means a very long and wasted day waiting for a bunch of tests and a large co-pay at the end of it.  So, I called my doctor’s office in the hope that I could get in to see a doctor.  My usual doctor had moved, so I would have to meet with an unfamiliar doctor (in the same practice) for this issue.  But it was still better than a trip to the emergency room.  No luck though.  After the doctor’s office assistant relayed my description of the problem to one of the doctors along with my age, I was summarily charged to get myself to the emergency room right away.

I called my husband and he came to pick me up.  I opted to go home to at least slip into more comfortable  sweats and flats rather than the dress, stockings and heels I had worn to work.  If I was going to spend the rest of the day in the emergency room, at least I was going to be comfortable.

When you present yourself in the emergency room with chest pains, there is no waiting.  They were definitely taking my situation more seriously than I was.  My blood pressure was elevated.  Of course, it was.  They were making me nervous.  They gave me a blood test, chest x-ray, an EKG and an aspirin. Then we waited.  I was hooked up to monitors and an IV. Then they gave me an ultra sound to see if my gall bladder was okay.  The pain kept coming, randomly and fleeting.  I described it as a seven on a scale of one to ten.  But thankfully, each time it didn’t last but a second.

I didn’t have a heart attack.  My gall bladder was fine.  The verdict was that I was either having muscle spams or an artery was blocked.  I would have to get a stress test in the next few days and I needed to take the results of my tests to my primary doctor within the next 48 hours.  I was to return immediately if the pain persisted for longer than a second or two.  Okay, message received.  But I no longer had a primary doctor, just the practice where my former doctor used to practice.

At 4:45pm when they released me, I immediately called the doctor’s office and was informed that the next available appointment was on November 28.  It was November 2.  First, I laughed.  Then I explained that I was just released from the emergency room for chest pains and the ER doctor said I needed a follow-up appointment within 48 hours and a stress test.  The receptionist promised that she would get me in with the first cancellation the next day.  And she did.

I went to the appointment with the doctor who’d had the first cancellation.  But before I met with him, I asked the front desk attendants to tell me about the two doctors as I would eventually choose one of them to be my new primary physician.  One was described as a laid back surfer type, really good for pain killers (their words) and the other is really nice and approachable, but wasn’t much on pain medication.  The non-drug pusher was the one I was meeting with. That worked for me since I’m not interested in pain killers or doctors who prescribe them too freely.

I loved the doctor I met with.  He was an internist and took the time to describe the difference between his training and that of a general practitioner.  He asked a lot of questions, which I appreciated.  And more importantly, he took the time to really explain to me about my risk factors for a heart attack and why going to the emergency room for chest pains was essential for a woman like me.  Being post-menopausal is a risk factor in itself.  I have high blood pressure.  I have kidney disease and high cholesterol.  All risk factors.  Thus the necessity of having the stress test next week.  Because women are so tricky, he couldn’t rule out a blocked artery.  And once again, I was admonished to get myself to the ER if the pain persisted longer than a second.  I like the idea better that what I continue to experience is a muscle spasm, but I’m going to have the damned stress test just in case.  Fingers crossed.