Okay, here goes…

…this is gonna be rather long and perhaps a bit TMI for some, so I’m putting it past the jump…

Remember how I was talking about hot flashes, menopause, and heart attacks? Well, another symptom of menopause is a panic attack, the symptoms of which mimic those of a heart attack.

Well, I had a really bad panic attack on Wednesday…it was so bad that I really did think I was gonna die, and I did something I swore I would never do…I called 911. I know I said I’d rather die that go to a hospital, but I thought of what it would do to Mike if I actually died. So I did it.

I didn’t want to take the chance of the cats getting out when the EMT people came, so I went outside and sat on the porch and called 911 from my cell. Then I called Mike and told him that I’d called 911, but I didn’t know where they’d be taking me, he’d hear back when I did know.

So the ambulance got there, I was still awake but very lightheaded. They asked me what hospital, and I said “ANYWHERE BUT MELROSE-WAKEFIELD!” (aka The Hospital From Hell). I wasn’t that out of it! In addition to not liking the place due to Mike’s experiences there, I might add that his personal care physician, Dr. Quackenstein, happens to be a cardiologist who practices there. Since I don’t have a PCP, they would assign a cardiologist to me if I were admitted, and this guy was the LAST person I wanted!

Well, they took me to another Hallmark Health hospital, Lawrence Memorial. Oh, joy, that company is one of the most money-grubbing outfits, they’ll keep me there forever. Trust me, they TRIED to, but more on that later.

The “attack” or whatever it was, passed in the ambulance. I decided that I wanted to get the hell out of there, and demanded to be allowed to call Mike. I had my cell phone, but even though it was okay to use one where I was, I wasn’t getting a signal. I became more and more agitated, and finally got to call Mike when someone tried to make me sign some paper. I said that I wasn’t signing shit until they handed me a phone so I could call my husband. Hell, they even dialed the number for me.

They tried to dope me up with something called ativan. I finally agreed to it just to shut them up. Then they said they wanted to administer it through an IV. I said, no fucking way. So they brought me a pill, which I pretended to take. I hid it in my shorts pocket when no one was looking, and later flushed it down the toilet when I got to my room.

When Mike got there, I felt better. I still wanted to go home, but I reluctantly agreed to stay for one night so they could run some more tests. But I also said that if they ran the tests and didn’t find anything wrong, I wanted to be released the next day. I made it quite clear that I did not want to be there even one minute longer than necessary. I’ve talked about what the other place did to Mike, kept him there for what seemed like forever. I wasn’t going to sit back and allow this to happen to me.

This place doesn’t have single rooms, like THFH does, they are doubles. At first, I was there by myself, but then they moved in this woman who proceeded to drive me batshit insane, but not by trying to talk to me. She was hooked up to an IV, and every time she rolled over and blocked the flow, a loud beeping noise came from the machine.

She also shit herself; that was quite “fragrant”. I know she couldn’t help it, but jeez, did I have to be in the same room with her? I was feeling perfectly fine by this time, I could have just gotten my ass out of that bed and walked the hell out, if I felt like it. And I DID feel like it.

But luckily, she shat herself while a nurse’s aide was taking her vitals, something it seems they do about every ten minutes in most hospitals. So the aide quickly called for help in cleaning it up. I didn’t have to look at any of this because of course, the curtain was drawn. But I had to smell it, and the commotion was annoying me.

After that, she still kept rolling on the IV tube, and I was ready to get up and walk out. I said so to the nurse, when she came in. I told her that if I had to put up with this all night, I’d just be worse off due to lack of sleep, and then they’d use that as an excuse to try to keep me incarcerated in there longer.

She did say that I could go, but I’d have to sign a paper saying that it was “against medical advice”, and we all know what that means. It means that the insurance might not pay. That’s scary, since we have Cigna, who is forever looking for excuses to NOT pay for stuff. As for the roomie, the place was apparently full, and there was no place to move anyone to.

So I stayed, and they ended up moving my roomie back to the ICU (where she had come from in the first place). I don’t know what was wrong with her, but she seemed pretty fucked up, I don’t know why they moved her out of the ICU in the first place. I just prayed to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I would not get another roomie for the duration of my stay.

Speaking of the FSM, soon after I was moved to the room from the ER, the nurse asked me a whole shitload of questions, which she entered into a computer terminal thingy on wheels. One of the questions was “do you want a chaplain to visit you?” Knowing that it was highly unlikely that they had a rep from The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster there, I declined.

I was also asked if I wished to see a social worker. I said, and I quote, “oh, PLEASE, NO!!!”

Anyway, to prove how coherent I was, I actually thought of asking her if that computer was connected to the internet, and if I could borrow it to log into my blog. But I didn’t, it probably wouldn’t be allowed anyway.

Turned out I didn’t sleep very well, anyway. Too much noise out in the hallway, not to mention the nurse’s aides that kept waking me up to make sure I was still alive, take blood pressure, and all of that happy horseshit. I swear, this is a scam to make you have to stay there longer. Sleep and just resting is supposed to help people get better, but how the hell can you do that when you have people bothering your ass every ten minutes? Nothing like being woken up at 5AM so they can take blood. But it was the third and final require blood-taking, apparently they have to do three blood samples to do the blood work, so if it meant I was one step closer to getting out of that hellhole, I was all for it.

Those beds ain’t exactly comfy, either…cheapy foam mattresses that made my back hurt. At home, we have a foam mattress, too, but it is very firm. But I didn’t want to tell anyone at the hospital that my back was hurting, because they’d use that as yet another excuse to keep me there. Luckily, I was allowed to keep my purse with me, and I had some ibuprofens in it, so I was taking those for the back pain when I was sure no one was looking.

I didn’t get any sleep after the 5AM blood-drawing, so I sat up and watched the FOX25 Morning News on TV. It’s a good thing I wasn’t planning on going to the rolling rally parade for the Boston Celtics, otherwise, I’d be REALLY pissed to be incarcerated. The morning news was about almost nothing but the Celtics’ amazing victory over the Kobe Bryants L.A. Lakers, and the parade.

Mike called out of work and came to be with me. I had already had, the day before, ultrasounds and chest X-rays. A cardiologist came to see me and told me that I didn’t have a heart attack, and in fact, so far, he couldn’t see anything wrong with the old ticker. He wanted me to do this “stress test” thing, where I first had a CT scan, then walked on a treadmill, and then had another CT scan. He said that if that looked good, I could go home that day.

So I went and did all of this stuff, which took a couple of hours. Mike waited up in the room, read the paper (hey, they give all patients the Boston Globe for free! Isn’t that thrilling?), and watched TV.

When I came back, Mike informed me that someone from “social services” named Donna had come by twice to see me. WTF? What part of “no social workers” did these asshats NOT understand? When the nurse came in, I told her about this Donna person, and told her that I did NOT wish to speak with ANY social worker.

Well, this Donna came back anyway, and I told her that I didn’t want to talk to her. She said that she was “ordered” by the ER staff the day before to visit me, apparently, they think I have some sort of mental illness. Well, if being assertive about what I will and won’t allow to let them do, and for refusing to sign papers until I was allowed to call my husband makes me crazy, well, take me to the looney bin now.

She told me something I already knew…that if they ruled out any cardiac problems, what happened to me was a panic attack, and perhaps I need to talk to someone about what is troubling me? Fuck, NOTHING is troubling me, it’s probably my fucking hormones going wild. What the fuck would I have a fucking panic attack over? The Red Sox losing a game? A shutoff notice from the power company? I’ve lived through a lot worse shit than that, and I never had these panic attack things before. She was insinuating that perhaps there was something wrong with my marriage, which might have been why she decided to show up when Mike went out to get himself some lunch. I bet she was lying in wait someplace until she saw him leave the room.

I might also add that the nurses kept trying to medicate me with the ativan crap. I kept refusing, because I wanted to keep my wits about me at all times. I did let them insert an IV thingy in my arm, but the only thing they used it for was some crap that made it easier for the CT scan to be seen.

Not ONCE, not fucking ONCE, did ANYONE at this hospital say that panic attacks are a symptom of menopause. When I brought it up, told them that I had done some research, it was brushed off. Since when is 48 “too young”? Aunt Flo hasn’t been here since August 2007, doesn’t that say something right there?

Donna talked to me as if I were mentally retarded, and I came right out and told her that she was offending me. She looked to be about my age. Yanno, maybe if she had spoken to me woman to woman, and not like a child or a retarded person, maybe I would have listened to what she had to say. As it was, I kicked her out of the room. Before she left, she said something like, “you DO know how to find mental health services if need be, don’t you?”

Yeah, bitch. I have a phone book. I have a computer and the internet, that is, if I ever get home to those things. Damned if I will ask for mental health services from the likes of you, or anyone in this fucking hospital.

It took forever for them to let me out. The cardiologist had already told me that the stress test looked good, so I was hopeful that someone would come and bring me release papers from the hellhole. But HOURS passed by, and nobody did. Then some guy brought me a dinner that I never asked for, as I never filled out the menus that they left me. I yelled at the poor schmuck to take it away. I feel bad about that, because it really wasn’t his fault, he was just doing what his boss told him to do.

I lost it and started crying, fearing that I’d do myself in if I had to spend another night in this place for no good reason. If Donna or another social worker came back to bother me again, I’d be homicidal. I was also on Day Two without a shower…I hadn’t had a chance to take one on Wednesday when I first called 911. The room had a shower stall in it, which taunted me each time I had to go and take a leak. How the fuck can you take a shower when you’re hooked up to a heart monitor? Yeah, it was a portable one, because I said no fucking way to using a bedpan…I can get up and walk just fine. But they wouldn’t let me disconnect any of the shit even for ten minutes so I can shower. Why the fuck do they bother having showers, when no one can use them? Same thing happened with Mike when he was incarcerated.

It’s surprising that no one gave me shit for taking the oxygen tube out of my nose. At first they insisted that it be there, but it was annoying the fuck out of me…the tube was too small and almost choking me, and the things up my nose felt like boogers that needed to be blown out. When I complained of the discomfort, they said I could take it out for five minutes at a time, but just that. I took it out and it stayed out. Not once during this whole ordeal did I have trouble breathing.

Anyway…Mike went to the nurses’ station and told them that if my test results were okay, that I really needed to be released…NOW. Could someone PLEASE go and check already? If not, I was getting dressed and walking out.

That made them go and check, and I was freed within half an hour. No doubt in my mind that if he hadn’t said anything, I’d still be rotting away there. As you know, I’ve been on his side of the patient/spouse fence, too, and I understand his frustration over all of this. He didn’t like being there, either.

I am 100% convinced that Hallmark Health’s corporate policy is to keep patients incarcerated for as long as they can possibly get away with. This is based on past experience, with Mike at Hellrose-Wakefield. They want to suck the insurance companies for as much $$$ as they can get. I suspect that most hospitals are like this.

So we went home, and I took a shower. After that, we went out to TGI Friday’s for dinner. I was starving, but didn’t want to eat the hospital food, because I felt that by eating dinner, I was somehow agreeing to stay there longer. Plus, it was meatloaf, which I’m picky about. Most commercially made meat loaves are dried up slabs of hamburger. No way am I eating that crap!

We also stopped at that fancy French department store, Tar-jhay, where I picked up some Estroven. Since no one at that hospital was willing to even entertain the thought that my symptoms might be due to fluctuating hormones due to the change, and cardio stuff was ruled out, well, I must be loco.

Estroven is a natural supplement with soy and black cohosh, among other things, which is supposed to help relieve many of the symptoms. It’s been around a while, and I’ve read about many women having success with it. So we’ll see how that goes. Since soy products are supposed to be good for menopausal woman, I’ve also started drinking Silk soy milk. The vanilla flavored one is actually quite tasty!

I’m sure that the staff at this hospital is not used to people like me. From what I saw, most of the patients there are old geezers with one foot on the banana peel, if you know what I mean. They are out of it and just lay there and let the nurses and doctors do whatever. They never question anything. That’s probably why they decided that I was crazy.

And you wondered why I don’t like doctors and hospitals…