Heart Hospital

My life is never boring. I have been having pains in my chest and arm for a few days. Yesterday it got a bit worse so we headed to the ER at Arkansas Heart Hospital. I can't say enough about how wonderful they all were. They put me on a monitor right away, drew labs to look at cardiac enzymes, and gave me nitroglycerine tablets. I guess my body doesn't like nitroglycerine. I had a terrible reaction to it, the ekg went nuts sending me in to a full blown panic attack. This earned me an admission in to the heart hospital. fun times. I met the cardiologist late last evening and he said they were going to go in right away and do an angiogram. They went in my wrist with a catheter and injected a dye into my heart so they could look at the flow. Thankfully everything was clear. I was discharged and sent home right around midnight last night. The doctor said there was no need to keep me there since he really didn't think my pain was cardiac related or life threatening. Smart man. Most doctors would have just kept a patient there since it was so late. I much prefer sleeping in my own bed so I was thankful to go home. Since I was armed with the knowledge that my pain was not a heart attack, (and was under the influence of valium, benadryl and a few other things) I was happy to go home. He really thinks my pain is reflux that could be made a bit worse by gall bladder issues. nice stuff. He said prilosec for 30 days and I go see him again on Tuesday to discuss some of the other labs they ran. Everyone at this hospital was WONDERFUL.
Today is Mother's Day. We got in so late last night so we slept in a bit this morning. About mid morning I noticed that I was developing a rash on my arms.. and it was spreading. I was getting hives all over my arms and legs. I think it was from the dye (had that happen once before from a ct scan) I took benadryl and eventually the hives went away. I had to go back to bed because of the benadryl, but I guess that's not such a bad way to spend Mother's Day.
My family is so wonderful.. I had a really good day today in spite of feeling yucky. My arm is a bit sore where they went in with the catheter and I still have the chest pain. My stress level is much lower since I know it's not my heart.
Scary stuff - thinking you are having a heart attack. Maybe the wake up call I needed.