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I'm Beth. I'm married to my best friend, and he's pretty awesome. We have two equally awesome kids, Gavin and Sophie.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Late night adventure

Okay, sorry I didn't update more about my late night hospital visit.  My sleep has been all thrown off so I have been just in zombie mode around here for the weekend.
Friday night I stayed up with Ernie since he was off work, and didn't go to bed until about 1:30.  I was laying there reading and my chest started hurting.  I have had that problem before so I sat up, hoping it wasn't going to be like the other times.  But it got worse -- the worst part about that is, I start having huge amounts of anxiety about it because I haven't yet figured out why I have these chest pains, so on top of the regular pain, I have panic attack pain.  I start thinking in my head that I'm going to die.  Well this time the pain was worse, so I actually woke Ernie up and asked him if I should call 911.  The thought of this scares me WAY worse because I don't have medical insurance and I know how expensive the ambulance bill would be on top of the hospital bill.  Instead, after a while Ernie decided he was worried enough about me that he was taking me to St. Peters.  (One downside of living out here...no hospital in town!)  So at about 3am Ernie got Sophie up out of bed and we made the drive in.  It was no fun. However, once we got there, it was quite a bit different from our other experiences with the ER...just mention chest pain, and you get in right away!! 
I had an EKG done, chest x-rays, and blood drawn.  Most of the time I just laid on a gurney and had my heart monitored.  They pretty much treated it as a heart attack coming in -- gave me the aspirin and all that.  Which is really scary.  I'm 28 years old.  The good news was, my EKG was perfect, my blood pressure is low as usual, and my cardiac enzymes and chest x-ray were just fine.  The only abnormality was elevated white blood cells.  Basically, they don't know why I'm having the pains.  Which sucks...I would like to get it figured out so I know what it is and how to prevent it!!  They have been a ton better since we started eating paleo, so I feel like grains/wheat/fried stuff may have something to do with it, but there's been no definite answer as to what is going on.  Its kind of scary knowing these 'attacks' can still happen even with our change in lifestyle with our eating and all that. I thought I had it figured out and I would never have them again!  I also have a *ton* of anxiety about getting the hospital bill in the mail, but we will just cross that bridge when we get there.  I am trying to control the anxiety I have, worrying about having more of these pains.  They were about a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, and the most pain I ever had in labor with Sophie was maybe a 6 or 7 to me.  So, I don't know really how to handle pain like that!  Especially when I have no reason for why its happening.  Its really scary!  Am I dying?  Am I having a heart attack?  I don't know at the moment its happening so its pretty hard to deal with.  The good news is, its gone now, I'm not having a heart attack in my 20s...
Another awesome part was how WONDERFULLY my daughter behaved in the ER at 3 am!  I fully expected a 3 year old who got woken up in the middle of the night to be grumpy and clingy and all of that.  And then to have to wait in the waiting room forever, I would expect whining.  But she did none of that.  It was like an adventure to her!  She got to wear her pjs out, and Ernie took her to the vending machines and got her orange juice and a bag of cookies.  She had a great time!  He even laid down on one of the couches and she sat quietly in a chair and looked at a book and played with her babies.  What a good girl!! She made it so much LESS stressful than it could have been.  She even told me "we're gonna take care of you mama." Awww.
I would appreciate prayers for me while I try to figure out what the heck is happening to make me have these!

1 comment:

  1. Oh Dot! I'm so sorry - that is scary and terrible. I am wondering if I need to come out there to monitor the situation ;) Love you tons...

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