Labour day is one of those Holidays where you don't go to work, but stuff needs to get done. Fortunately this obligation required only about an hour of my time at the office, leaving the evening free for me to do whatever I wish. This evening I wished to lay on the couch and watch TV. Generally reclining on a couch is not associated as being a painful activity, so imagine my surprise when I experienced pain from the simple act of sitting upright. It was sharp and sudden, deep inside, somewhere under my left ribs. I had never experienced a pain in this location before. I wondered if I was so lazy that sitting on a couch would cause me to pull a muscle. It was annoying but seemed to be getting no worse. That is, until I went to bed that night.
Normally I sleep comfortably on my right side. My first sign that things were going to be troublesome involved the simple act of getting into bed and lying down. It hurt. A lot. Sharp pain, deep in my chest , seeming to be under the ribs on my left side. It hurt to roll on my right side. Or to the left. Lying on my back was no better. I spent a miserable night wondering if I should go to the ER. The only position that was somewhat comfortable was sitting up. I might have dozed, in fits and starts but I did not rest. Morning did not bring any relief, and I was having a miserable time simply moving through my usual routine. I would walk to work that day, and noticed that it hurt to take deep breaths. It seemed that a visit to the local clinic was in order.
Fortunately that Tuesday morning the clinic traffic was relatively light and I was ushered in quickly after I was registered. My nurse took the usual vitals: temperature, blood pressure, heart rate. Everything seemed OK. I was then examined by the clinic doctor, who said that although they could give me an EKG, they didn't have the resources to fully rule out any heart-related issues. For that I would need to go to our local ER.
The last time I was in this particular ER was shortly after receiving my first chemo treatment. Back then I was treated for Thrush and given a stern reminder about going to an ER when chemo-compromised. Now almost five years later, I note the changes that have occurred. The registration process still consists of a security guard directing you where to sit, in this case the Triage Registration Waiting Area. No longer the hard plastic industrial seats, these are almost comfortable. I wait for my turn to be seen by the nurse, resigning myself to the fact that I must have something horribly wrong with me else why I did I come to Emerg? My turn arrives to visit the nurse. As I rise I struggle to lift my backpack without grimacing. In triage I dutifully tell the nurse my story of the sudden onset of my pain, the subsequent visit to a clinic, and the redirect to the ER. My oxygen and temperature stats are checked, then I'm sent to the Registration Waiting Area.
Registration is quick, and a familiar face greets me from the other side of the desk. An associate who remembers me from when I once worked as an IT tech at this same hospital over twenty years prior comments that the last time we saw each other was in this same ER back in 2005. Back then I was seeking relief from extreme pain caused by a kidney stone. Today's issue were not as raw, but I felt it was something that needed to be checked regardless. Registration complete, I'm sent back to the waiting room. Less than half an hour later, I hear my name being called, and I think that at this rate I'll be back to work later that afternoon. I would soon learn how inaccurate that thought would be.
It turned out that I was being called not to see the doctor, but to be given some preliminary tests. As I had presented with chest pain, I would be receiving an EKG. A blood samples would also be taken. In total my pleasant tech and I spent perhaps less than 15 minutes together, after which I returned to the waiting area once more. My real ER experience was just beginning.
I'm well-prepared to wait it would seem: laptop, tablet, MP3 player, all manner of diversions which make it appear that we are constantly connected to the larger world. But WiFi reception was poor, the slowly loading web pages seemingly a mirror to how time crawls by in the ER. I canceled an appointment for an eye exam that was scheduled for later that day. That was at 2:00PM. By 5:00PM I wondered if I should have had lunch. During my wait I had only sipped on some water, steadfastly refusing to eat anything "just in case". Now going on six hours, I was no longer anxious, just uncomfortable, bored and tired. I would continue waiting til around 6:00PM, when I was finally ushered into the ER proper. I kept thinking that six hours wasn't so bad. But I was wrong once more.
Inside the ER I get to wait some more. This time I sit on hard plastic chairs consistent with my general perception of ER waiting rooms. It appears that I'm just waiting until an exam room becomes available. I'm brought in when it's ready, and the ER nurse performs more checks on my general health. I'm informed I'll be going for a CT scan. Before the scan takes place however, I'll moved to another waiting area, the fifth of my sojourn. The chairs in this waiting area are the most comfortable so far. There's a patient seated beside me, receiving an IV. She's wrapped in a blanket and looks exhausted. I say hello, as I recognized that we had both arrived at the Hospital at roughly the same time. We chat a bit, exchanging our medical histories as perfect strangers seem to do in this situation. She has terminal stage 4 lung cancer. I tell her my story. We find we're both being sent for CT's. Our porter brings her via wheelchair to the CT suite. I walk the short distance, glad of the small relief for cramped muscles and inactivity of the past eight hours.
It's quiet in the CT suite, lights subdued and sounds muted. My fellow patient has her exam first. My turn is soon after. The methodical and efficient CT techs have us in and out of there in short order. I have another CT exam to add to my collection. Exam complete, my co-patient and I wait for the porter to retrieve us, returning us back to the ER. It is almost eight hours since I was registered. I've had an EKG, blood test and my vital signs recorded. I've just finished a CT and now I finally get to see the doctor. She's all smiles and tells me she has good news.
It's not a heart problem: I have pneumonia. How can this be good I wonder? My doctor assures me that it was caught very early and the antibiotics she prescribes will help. She also mentioned that they checked for evidence of cancer in my lungs -given my past history I suppose that's a good thing. There was nothing of note. With that diagnosis my ER visit was nearly over. A nurse would remove my IV lock, and after that I was free to go home, over eight hours after I had first walked into the Hospital.
On the way home we stop at a pharmacy to fill the prescription. A course of five days, two pills the first night and one a day for the next four days. I'm told by the pharmacist that I'll feel better tomorrow. I figure I can't feel any worse: sore chest, tired and drained of any energy, yet I did nothing all day but sit. I hadn't eaten until I was discharged from ER. I had no appetite. I just wanted to sleep.
I would take the next day off, mostly to recover my energy, and hopefully not be affecting anyone when I returned to work. When I was given my diagnosis of pneumonia by the ER physician, I had asked her how I got it. She candidly admitted that she didn't know. I guess in life we can never assume there's a visible cause and effect for everything. But I was OK, and after my day off which consisted of many many hours of doing nothing but napping, I felt a lot better.
I would take the entire course of my antibiotics, and by the end of the week my long vigil in ER was a fading memory. It would be a footnote in my blog, something tangential to my history within our medical system. I reflect on what this latest dip into the health care pool meant to me, and admitted to myself that my concern wins over my confidence these days. Terry at age forty would have shrugged off the nagging chest pain as an annoyance and ignored it. Nearly 55, I have learned to accept that you cannot resist the passage of Time, but you can still control the course of where you're going. The day I spent in ER was something I chose to do. Had I not gone, there might have been considerable more time in Hospital recovering from far more perilous effects of that pneumonia. The choices life gives us aren't always what we want, but what we make of them is entirely our own.
