Me! ER! Chest pains! Noooooooooo!

Actually, yes.  And I lived!  The courageous nurses and doctors at St Mary's ER knew just what to do when I showed up unannounced at about 11 a.m. last Sunday, saying I was having chest pains.  The angel at the receiving window first told me to go wait in the waiting room, but then she looked at my sign-in sheet and saw the words "chest pain" and decided that maybe I could come in immediately.  They made me take off my shirt and undershirt, had me lay down on a gurney, then stuck a lot of electrode launch pads on me and did a quick EKG, then left.  I guess they must have been studying that EKG for a long time looking for who knows what, because nobody came back for about two hours.  After a while I looked at Cathy, who was dumb enough to come along, and said, "I don't think I am having a heart attack."  

"How do you know that?"

"If I was having a heart attack I think someone would have been back by now."  

She laughed.

They did send a nurse (male, but a nice guy) to get a bunch of blood, bringing back nostalgic memories of an engine failure at night in the training command where I had to land my broken helicopter in a field.  After taking 20 or 30 vials of blood he said someone would be by to take me out for a chest x-ray (in a couple of hours). 

There was an old dude and his old wife in the next gurney over, and he was about ready to leave, but the ER doctor wanted a nurse to walk him around the halls a bit to see if he was ok because his claim to fame was that he fainted in church.  So, a few minutes later a nurse came and had me get out of the gurney and started walking me around.  I thought she was taking me to x-ray, but then she turned me around the wrong way, and then everybody realized that she had grabbed the wrong patient.  We all had a good laugh then she took the old guy for a walk.  I got back in the gurney and when I went to get the picture taken I rode in the gurney.

The whole thing proved that my heart was ok, (no heart attack) but the doctor wanted to exert some more authority over me and make me wait some more to justify the outrageous ER bill that was going to go to my HMO, so he ordered a gall bladder ultrasound because he figured since the pain wasn't from my heart, it must be from my gall bladder.  That turned up negative too.  Boy, did he look silly!  

We finally got out of there at about 4:30 in the afternoon.  Best anyone can tell, I had some kind of esophagus reflux or something.  Now I'm told I can't eat fast food, especially if it's fried. I might as well be dead.  Today, which is Thursday and Cathy's birthday, I had to go back to the hospital for a treadmill stress test, that again showed that my heart is healthy.  I might have that heart attack when I get my bill from HMO though.  That is gonna hurt.