Back in October I posted a thread about my having chest pains. The hamsters were feeling particularly mischievious that day as they ate my OP, leading more than one Doper to think that I had dropped over dead on the spot. Oh the hilarity. The upshot was I was diagnosed with pericarditis, put on an anti-inflammatory and sent on my way.
Sunday I wake up with the same pain again. Off to urgent care I go, mildly annoyed that I can’t just call my doctor and get a prescription for the same meds again since I know exactly what’s wrong, but at the same time understanding the reluctance of any doctor to treat chest pain by phone.
The nurse this time around was much more confidence-inspiring than last time. The last one said things like (while trying to draw blood) “If I don’t get this right the first couple of times I’ll get someone in here who knows what they’re doing.” Oh yes, that’s quite calming for someone thinking he might be having a coronary, thank you. This one didn’t even have to draw any blood and she was able to hook up the ECG leads to the right places the first time without even having to shave little bald spots on my chest.
The first doctor who saw me said she figured I was having a recurrance of the pericarditis but she wanted to have another doctor take a look too. Not really sure why; she didn’t really say. The second doctor was kind of a dick. He had the records department fax over a copy of my last ECG for comparison because apparently my heart rhythms are normally slightly abnormal. The records people found two ECGs (one from several years ago) and faxed both of them. He called the records clerk while I was in the room to chew her out because the fax didn’t transmit the dates of the ECG. Then he put me on the med I’d been on and told me not to take another similar med I’m taking for something else, but identified my med by the brand name when I had given him the generic name. When I expressed my confusion he got testy and defensive about how he didn’t know the drug was off-patent so he always called it by the brand name (one wonders how a layment such as I would know the generic name in that case). He said he thought I didn’t have pericarditis, saying it was probably “chest wall pain.” I plan to still tell people that it’s pericarditis, because it’s such a sexier sounding name. Sounds so much more serious than “chest wall pain.” Feh on “chest wall pain”!
The good news is I’ve been on the meds for a day and the pain is almost gone, which is exactly how fast I responded last time. The bad news (other than having to deal with pain which is no fun) is that I was planning on kicking up my workouts a bit because I want to drop 10-15 pounds by my birthday in mid-April and with being sidelined for up to a week I don’t know if I’ll be able to make that.