the passionate ailurophile

Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged here, huh?  If you have been following me on Twitter and Facebook, you know the general gist of the story…on Thursday, I had to go to the ER.  I honestly thought I was having a heart attack, and I wasn’t sure if I’d make it to the hospital in time.

I’ve talked about the anxiety attacks coming back and all here on this blog.  I also mentioned that I’d been in the process of setting up appointments with docs at the Lahey Clinic to help me with this problem.  Anyhoo, an appointment nurse called me back on Thursday and set me up with a new primary care doc, an appointment with her for July 9, and an appointment with her physician’s assistant sooner (it was Monday, June 29, as in yesterday) to deal with the anxiety issues.  A PA is not an actual doctor, but they can prescribe meds, which was the primary purpose of this particular appointment.

The weird thing was that almost as soon as I got off the phone with the appointment nurse, I started having the Panic Attack From Hell.  I popped an Ativan and did my breathing exercises, hoping it would go away.

It did not.  It kept getting worse.  I was getting super light-headed, having chest pains, headaches, tummy aches, the whole nine yards.  This was FAR worse than anything that had ever happened to me before, and I was truly frightened.

I told Mike to call 911.  He said that if he did, the ambulance would probably refuse to take me to Lahey, where I’d said that I’d want to be taken should something happen to me.  They would probably opt to take me to one of the closer hospitals, as in the hellhole, and the sister of the hellhole, the latter being the place where I went last year for this crap.  I had sworn, after Mike’s most unpleasant experiences with Hallmark Health, that I’d rather just die now, than be taken to one of their hospitals.  If I really were having a heart attack, yeah, the ambulance EMTs would save me, but then the hellhole hospital people would find some way to kill me later on, like they could have killed Mike if I hadn’t gotten him out of that toilet.  If my only choice is death, I want it sooner than later, yanno?

So the only guaranteed way to get to Lahey was in the car, and Mike took me there.  Several times, I thought I was gonna expire right there in the car, as I came thisclose to blacking out several times.

Obviously, I made it there alive.  The worst of the anxiety attacks had passed, but I was still so shaky that I needed the security guard lady who is stationed outside the ER to help me get into the building, into a wheelchair.  Mike needed to go and park the car so it would not be blocking ambulance traffic to and from teh ER.  Unlike the hellhole, Lahey has a dedicated parking lot for ER patients, so he was able to park quickly and come in to be with me.

Very shortly after checking in, a nurse whisked me into a room where they did an EKG on me.  The test showed that I did not have a heart attack.  But they wanted to do a boatload more tests to make sure, so we were in for a long night.It did not help that the TV in the ER waiting area was tuned to a channel that had nothing but Michael Jackson death news on it.  MJ was about a year older than I am, and he expired from a heart attack.  Does someone who comes to the ER with heart attack symptoms really need to see this?  However, people wanted to watch this stuff.  Luckily, I’d had the presence of mind to grab a tote bag that contained a few magazines that I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet, so I read them to distract myself from all of the talk of death on the TV (yeah, they talked about Farrah, too, but that death was expected).  I wished that I’d gotten myself some new Amazon books to read, because I went through my mags pretty quickly.

The ER at Lahey was wicked busy that evening, more so than I’d seen before, in the two times when Mike was the patient.  In fact, the whole hospital was up to full capacity, no beds in regular rooms upstairs.  I ended up spending the night in a little private cubicle in the ER, which, thankfully, had its own TV, so I could watch something besides news stories about death.  By this time, Mike was getting wicked tired, so I sent him home to get some sleep.

Anyhoo, they did a whole boatload of tests on me, and was surprised that they said I was healthier than I thought I was.  They did a chest CATscan, as well as a cardiac stress test complete with before and after sonograms.  They not only found nothing wrong with the old ticker, but nothing physically wrong anywhere else, either.  They were FAR more thorough than the people at the sister of the hellhole were when I went there last year for this crap…and that was over a span of THREE visits to their ER!

So they released me on Friday afternoon, and when we got home, I took a much-needed shower, and then we headed right back out to the Fisher Cats game.  I had enough Ativan on hand to get me through the weekend until the Monday appointment, but I really didn’t need it.  The only thing that the ER doc prescribed for me was Prilosec, because I’d complained of tummy issues, too.  Also, acid reflux causes chest pain.

Since we were anxious to get to the ball game, I did not fill that script that day.  Mike is also on prescription Prilosec, same size tablets, so I’ve just been borrowing his until I get my scripts filled at CVS later today.  I knew that when I went to see the PA on Monday, she’d be giving me scripts for happy pills, so I’m just going to get them all filled at once, to save time.

The Prilosec is actually doing some good, so I will fill my own script, give Mike back the four tablets I took from his script, and keep taking it.

Okay, so Monday I had the appointment with my new PCP’s PA, at Lahey.  I was very impressed when she appeared in the exam room with a file of my visit to the ER, she was actually prepared for me, none of this, *so what brings you here today?* time-wasting crap, when they should KNOW because it’s on their damned computers!

Anyhoo, she gave me a script for Zoloft, after I told her all about the hell that was Prozac from last year.  She told me that I might take to it better and not have the bad side effects.

She also gave me more Ativan, but only to get me through until the Zoloft kicks in, which can take a couple of weeks.  Ideally, I would like to not have Ativan at all.

So we’ll take it from there and see how things go!

I first brought Mike to the Lahey Clinic because he was getting poor treatment from the hellhole, and I felt that he deserved better than that.  Lahey has an excellent reputation, and from what we’ve seen, it is well-earned.  So if they are good enough for him, they are more than good enough for me, too.  As the PA I saw said, so now you are a Lahey family!

I guess we are.  And we’re happy about it, as we are very impressed with the way they do things, how they are on the ball and know what’s going on with patients.

Not leaving them sitting in their own waste in a hospital bed is a huge plus, as well.  This was Mike, not me.  The hellhole left him in that condition when I went up to Manchester for Fisher Cats Opening Night.  If I had known it had gotten that bad at the hellhole, I would never have taken that trip!

I think it’s all gonna be okay now!