Of course I was hoping that today's trip to the ER would be nothing like my previous two trips. After all, I had driven 2 hours from Milwaukee, WI. I had every intention of being checked into the hospital. I had every intention of not coming out until I was well and had some answers (that is if I even made it out of the hospital). I was feeling so terrible, I was in such bad shape, not coming out of the hospital was actually a possibility. I don't ever remember feeling that bad. I hope to never ever revisit that place again in my life of being that sick and being near death..
I pulled in front of my parents house off the road. We immediately got into my parents car. When we arrived at the hospital emergency room, my father had to carry my inside. I was breathing so poorly and sweating so badly that I actually got expedited into triage. To be given expeditious treatment in an urban area hospital if you are not shot, stabbed or bleeding profusely had to be a miracle from God Almighty. However, my mother was very adamant about letting them know that I was just in this same ER about a month prior with the same chest pain, except this time things were more severe. I had to stop myself from crying because it was such a bad idea with the type of pain I was experiencing in my chest and rib cage area. I cringe when I think about how thin I was at that time because I had lost so much weight and not in a healthy way.
Let's me go back in time real quick. A month prior, I had come home to Chicago to hang out for the weekend. This was about two weeks after my first ER trip from my job in Milwaukee. I was feeling so badly at home that weekend, my mother insisted that I go to the emergency room. Sure enough I went to the emergency room at Engalls Hospital in Harvey, IL. This particular ER doctor was very empathetic. I was doing the best that I could to describe the pain in my chest. He asked me a series of questions about my activities. He asked me if I hurt myself. I said no. He asked me if I had been wrestling. I thought that was an odd question, but I said no. Finally, he asked me if had been doing anything like exercising or working out and I said yes.
As soon as I moved to Milwaukee and started my internship, the very first thing that I did was to join a Bally's Total Fitness gym in downtown Milwaukee. If you read my very first posted blog, myself and others had me convinced that I had a very unbalanced life. Therefore, I thought that I needed to "get it together". I bought multi-vitamins. I joined a gym. Once the summer started, I had a steady schedule, which included a 9 to 5 job. At least for the summer, I had a somewhat "normal" non-student life. I was making some life changes. By making the changes, I thought that all of those strange & mysterious things would stop happening to my body.
I told the doctor that I started to exercise at the gym and lift weights about a month ago, but I had to stop because of the increasing chest pain. The doctor then told me that the chest pain could likely be attributed to some strained or pulled muscles in my chest. It sounded very reasonable. He went on to say this, "When you have pulled muscles in your chest, it is difficult to relax them so they can heal like if you pull a muscle in your leg or your arm. You can simply not use your leg or arm. But that is not the case with muscles in your chest. You have to breathe, laugh, sneeze and continue to use those muscles. So therefore, it is very painful." What he said to me sounded very logical and he was extremely empathetic. But still, even during this visit, I did share with this doctor some of my other symptoms like the fatigue and the aching and the joint pain, but they are were all dismissed. This ER doctor prescribed me some pain pills. I left and went back to my mom's house. At least I felt like I had some answers even though I still felt like a hot bag of garbage.
Now, let's fast forward up to the day I was in total crisis in Engalls Hospital once again. As bad a shape I was in, on the surface, my vitals were fine. My oxygen levels were fine. My blood pressure was not high. The ER doctor kept looking at me and she knew that I was in REAL pain. This particular ER doctor showed some real empathy and she told the attendee to order a simple sedimentation rate (sed rate) test. Forgive me, but I'm about to very simply break down what that is. A sed rate test is a simple test that tells the doctor if there's any type of inflammation going on in the body. The sedimentation rate (sed rate) blood test measures how quickly red blood cells settle in a test tube in one hour. The more red cells that fall to the bottom of the test tube in one hour, the higher the sed rate. When inflammation is present in the body, certain proteins cause red blood cells to stick together and fall more quickly than normal to the bottom of the tube.
For example, if the body has a fever, the body would react with inflammation. If I cut my finger, my body would react with inflammation. If I stubbed my toe, my body would react with inflammation. There are a myriad of minor and severe conditions like cancer, liver or kidney problems that can cause inflammation. But the point of the test is to identify a degree of inflammation. If the degree of inflammation is severe, then the doctors can track down the cause of the inflammation. The amount of inflammation is measured with a number. What is considered to be a normal sed rate varies with age for a man or a woman.
A normal sed rate can range between 10 and 20. If I cut my finger or if have a fever, my sed rate could go as high as 40 or 50. Basically, the idea of a sed rate test is to let a doctor know that something is going on within the body that is causing the body to be react with inflammation. My sed rate number on that day was 156. It was off the chart. The ER doctor was flabbergasted. She almost could not believe it and she told me that she had never seen anything like it. She made them run the test again. But outside of the test, she knew that I was a very sick young lady and something very bad was going on. It was gonna be a long night to say the least. Little did I know, it turned into a long 30s nights. Hmmm...only if a certain ER doctor in Milwaukee would have taken 90 minutes to run the same sed rate test 6 weeks prior...but I digress.
The ER doctor immediately came back and admitted me into the hospital. They ran all kinds of tests. They immediately found that my lung sacs were inflamed and my heart sac was inflamed. I had to wait until the next day to find not only was my heart sac inflamed but it was full of fluid. They couldn't tell for sure about the fluid until I had a heart echo with this machine done by the cardiologist office. I couldn't get the echo until the next morning. The first step of finally getting admitted to the hospital was checked off the list. Finally being taken seriously and to finally getting some answers felt good. But being in the hospital didn't make me feel any better. I still felt like a hot steaming bag of garbage. Then I abruptly noticed an absence of drugs. There were no drugs. Where in the world were the drugs??? I was in more pain inside of the hospital than I was on the outside. How did that happen? Needless to say, I hated my first night in the hospital.
The next morning, in comes the infectious disease doctor with his salt and pepper hair. He was an older gentleman from somewhere in the middle east probably in his early 50's at the time. His nice fragrance and cool accent were all a nice distraction as he was telling me why they decided not to put me on an antibiotic or give me any real strong medication for the pain. They didn't want to taint any diagnosis as they were trying to find out what was really wrong with me. The phlebotomist was coming in every hour drawing my blood taking blood cultures to see if my blood would turn positive for any bacteria. What I already knew is that when anyone comes into the hospital as sick as I was, especially anyone young, and the doctors have NO idea what is making the person sick, the first thing the hospital does is assign an infectious disease doctor to the case. They automatically assume the patient could be infected or present with some unknown contagion. I knew that from my training as a pharmaceutical representative. This was going to be a long and interesting ride....
