The Magic Words

So I started having this tightness in my chest, which became increasingly uncomfortable to the point where I felt I should be seen.

Went down to HR and asked if they knew where the nearest urgent care was. She told me, then asked what was going on. I told her about the chest pain. She asked me to sit down and wanted to call an ambulance. She told me urgent care would just take my co-pay & send me to the ER, so I should just go to the ER anyway.

I didn't want an ambulance. Ambulances involve paperwork and I don't like paperwork.

So we compromised and I let her assistant drive me to the ER.

I walk in and tell the person at the check in window I am having chest pain.

Those are the magic words.

Amazing shit happens when you walk into a hospital ER and say "I'm having chest pain."

I think they have a flowchart that says "Is it an old white dude?" if yes then "Is it Chest Pain" if yes then activate everyfuckingbody in the wholefuckingplace NOW.

They had me on a gurney doing an EKG in about 30 seconds. EKG looked OK. They did blood. Blood was OK. I do have acid reflux, so the doc suggested IV pepcid (I didn't know you could take pepcid intravenously) and what they call a "gastric cocktail." I asked for my gastric cocktail to have grey goose, but apparently they don't make them that way.

They told me it was mylanta, lydocaine, and some other stuff. It tasted like a dead crow that had been infused with whale shit and left to rot in the sun for 30 days. Why does medicine always taste like that? Do drug companies have a department that specializes in making medicine taste has horrible as it possibly can?

But it worked. My symptoms resolved and I went home.

One more day in the desert....

 

Glad to hear you're ok. Having worked in an ER, you're absolutely right, those words get you attention immediately. No one wants to be the hospital that let a guy have a heart attack in the waiting room.

On a side note, you might be interested to know that part of our orientation for new ER residents involved having them drink a GI cocktail, so that they knew what it tasted like when they put down the order to have it administered. But we also strapped them to the backboard with a cervical collar and left them that way for a while. Sure, you might call it hazing, but I think it instilled a little bit of empathy as well.

 

I wonder if my doc went through that? I'm thinking not, cause he didn't mention the taste. The nurse did, though....

Is the lydocaine to keep you from gagging?

 

I've done this. My day involved sitting on my butt in a hospital bed because apparently when you have a heart attack, the body produces a particular chemical. Even if the first blood test is clear (which mine was), the want to repeat the test 6 hours later. Thorough, but mind numbingly boring.

Luckily I took a book with me.

 

Glad you're ok.

I think the chemical is creatine, and it gets into the bloodstream in excessive amounts when heart tissue is damaged.

 

The lidocaine is actually to calm any of the gastric muscles that may be spasming, creating sympathetic contractions and pains in surrounding muscles. Or, at least, that's what the doctor told me when the same thing happened to me, and I had to drink the same cocktail.

 

It's ck, creatine kinase.

 

Glad to hear you are okay.

 

Well, shit. They should have let me have the grey goose then. Bastards.

 

Not even Grey Goose would've helped.....unless they gave you the GG before & after the "cocktail."

Glad to hear that you're OK now.

 

glad to hear that youre ok. heart attacks suck. I had one a few years ago