Over the weekend I had some pains in my chest that I considered to be thre results of a chest cold which is pretty common around here at this time of year. But Sunday night the pain got so bad I couldn't sleep so, on the encouragement of my wife, Monday morning I called in to the "Nurse Hotline" provided by our health insurance company. When I described the symptoms, she told me to get to the emergency room immediately...and made it more emphatic after she looked up my history and found a big-ol heart attack in my past. I wasn't convinced so I called my Doctor's MA and talked to her...she told me to call 911!!!! I told her I would go into Urgent Care and she said don't waste their time, they'll just send you to emergency....
So I went in to emergency...telling them I thought this was silly and useless...they took an EKG and slammed me into the hospital...they scheduled me for a Nuclear Stress Test for this morning and treated me like a heart attack call all night long...constant monitoring, massive doses of NITRO..shots/pills for everything...
The stress test was a nightmare. It's pretty brutal...but...it came out clean...I'm not having another heart attack and the weird reading on the EKG was probably a result of the damage from the first heart attack. Possibly I had bronchial spasms of some sort or another as a result of this crappy weather and 35 years of smoking a pipe.
I am home and can go to council and board meetings tonight so I'm back in the saddle....and not about to die.
