Night in the ER

It takes a lot to get me to a doctor. It takes a whole lot more to get me to a hospital. So you can only imagine what it took to get me to wake up my husband last night after he worked all day, to take me to the emergency room. I woke up about 1am with chest and back pains. At first they were sort of dull and achy I couldn't even really tell what hurt or where. I took Gas X thinking it was gas, I stayed sitting up for a while, nothing helped, it got worse, I even vomited.

Finally after an hour and probably far too much debating I woke John up and he took me to the ER. They triage me and my blood pressure was 165/120. They took me back right away of course, I get all hooked up to oxygen, IV port put in, EKG, heart monitor leads, pulse/ox machine. Uh. I get baby aspirin and nitro. At that point I am really freaking out. Am I having a heart attack? I mean of course that was on my mind, that is why I came in. I get a chest x-rays, Lopressor to bring down my blood pressure because it was just staying way up there, fluids through IV, all kinds of blood tests, one called a D-dimer to check for clots and then the usual ones to check my enzymes.

Thankfully everything was normal, and after 3 hours the pain was gone. They aren't really sure what caused it at all or why my blood pressure was so high. They are thinking my chest wall was spasming for some unexplained reason, real reassuring, and it stressed me causing my blood pressure to rise. The scariest part is all this happened while I was sleeping. So anyway we finally got home like 6am this morning. Of course John heads right to work, poor guy that is exactly why I debated about even going, I knew he would sit there with me and then go to work and work all day. I am so exhausted, but feel a lot better. Now I have to force myself to call my doctor for a follow up. Did I mention I hate doctors?