While You Were Out: Pat Called About your Odometer Test

Before you get all worried, let me reassure you, my odometer test was fine. (Didn’t know I was a car, didja? Well, if the GenderGenie folks had an AutoGenie writing test, maybe I wouldn’t be able to hide it any longer!)

Last week I started to notice strange pain in my chest. My muscles felt like they do when I’m stressed—perhaps similar to an anxiety attack?—all tight and uncomfortable. But, although I felt like I should be having shortness of breath, I didn’t. Weird…

It started to happen each evening, and I kept ignoring it. In the sense that I’d mention to the Consort “Oh, I’m feeling that weird feeling again…” and then I’d actively ignore it. So that he’d sleep lightly and be able to sense if Something More Ominous happened at night while I was asleep.

By this Tuesday, he insisted that I should have a doctor check it out, because anytime your body reacts in an unexpected way (as opposed to an expected way: you work out, you twist, you ache), that’s probably a message from your core to GET THINGS CHECKED OUT. On Wednesday, I called the doctor’s office and said I wanted to schedule an appointment, because I was having chest pain.

“We can fit you in next Wednesday at 10:40.”

[??!!!!!] (Can I just say? When we come back from new Hampshire, we are so finding a new practice.)

I gently asked if something like chest pain didn’t deserve a more rapid response, but no, I was reminded, if it was serious, I could go to the walk-in clinic (where I would wait 2 hours before I got to see a Nurse Practitioner, who wouldn’t be able to do anything, and would suggest I make an appointment to see a doctor). Ho-kay.

The receptionist called back about half an hour later and miraculously had found me an open appointment at 10:40 this very day! (I think someone got a bit of a talking to there at the scheduling desk.) It wasn’t, of course, with my regular doc; this one was a very nervous little man.

When this pain happens, do I feel clammy? No. Do I feel nauseous? No. Do I feel dizzy? No.

The doctor said, maybe it’s my heart. He said, let’s do an EKG. So we did an EKG. The nurse who did it kept apologizing, “I’m sorry for touching you,” for EACH and EVERY of the eight or so sticky patches she placed around my chest, and even for the two they stick at your ankles. (Lady, I’m at the doctor’s office, I’m in one of those gowns, I expect to be prodded and poked, it’s really no big deal!) When everything was attached, with the proper apologies proffered, she told me to hold still, pressed a button, and PRESTO! We were done. What a lot of prep for a tiny bit of test.

Ten minutes later, the doctor came back in and said my EKG was “beautiful.”

The doctor said, maybe it’s a lung clot. He said, let’s do a D-dimer test. So we did a D-dimer. The associate who drew my blood was chatty and professional, and didn’t apologize for sticking me with a needle. (Phew!)

The doctor came back in one last time and said the results should be in by that afternoon, and he’d give me a call. If it wasn’t a clot, then he thought it was probably “something in the chest wall.”

Uhhhh…

“Something” like what? A tumor? A bone fragment? What?

Like maybe, a pulled muscle. (Phew!)

The test results weren’t called in to me by Wednesday evening, but I figured at least it wasn’t my heart (because I had beyoooootiful EKG results), and if it had been a lung clot, they’d have called me immediately, so I felt no worries.

Yesterday afternoon, I saw the note Impera left me (see the title), and called the nurse, who confirmed the results were normal (she didn’t say I had beautiful blood, but that’s OK, it would have been creepy if she had).

This morning, I went to the chiropractor, and she poked and prodded my sternum (Ow!) and confirmed that yep, my upper chest muscles were all in a bunch. I must have overdone it when I helped rake out the winter leaf crap in the yard last week.

Bingo! I won't be raking leaves ever again.