non-emergency

Yesterday I took a little visit to the ER.

I was at work, about an hour after my lunch break, and I started getting a stomachache. It felt just like indigestion or something. Then a few minutes later the pain traveled all over my abdoment and went crazy. I think I'm pretty good at pain...not stoic, but I can usually handle it. This was 8/10, couldn't stand still, had to work on breathing kind of pain. And once it got up there, it stayed. No throbbing or waves, just steady-on blazing pressure. I told one of my friends, who took a second to realize I was serious, and then started doing vitals and listening to my heart and bowel sounds and everything. It's a perk to be surrounded by other nurses all day. My blood pressure was sky high, so I called my clinic. While I was still in pain, I described what had happened and answered a bunch of questions. She told me to go to the ER. After a while the pain went down to about a 5, and then down and down until it was gone. All in all, it was about 20-25 minutes. My work friend would not let me decide not to go, even though I tried, so off to the ER I went.

In retrospect, I could have gone to urgent care. Why I didn't think of that at the time is probably due to being pretty scared about what might be going on. So now I'll probably have a huge bill. Bler. So yea, they did blood work, and urine tests, a 12-lead EKG, and chest x-ray. The doctor said it all looked good. She also talked to me for almost half-an-hour. A very cool MD. After all this, her diagnosis? Stress.

Ha ha. Seriously?

Although I did tell her all about the infertility mumbo-jumbo, she seemed to think I was stressed even before knowing that. Also, she has a son, by IVF, so that was interesting. And the thing is, I had thought I was really de-stressing in the last few weeks. But when I started telling her about stuff, tears were coming to my eyes. I wasn't exactly crying, just tearing uncontrollably. Which makes me realize things are still a lot closer to the surface than I had thought.

I'm not sure I believe that it's only stress. I know all the tests were good, but I'm still worried it was something that they didn't test for. And I'm really not a hypchondriac. I've been having weird chest pains for long time now, which my NP is aware of, and there seems to be no reason for those. But this was serious pain, like I have never felt before. But even if it is only stress, what the hell am I supposed to do about that? I thought I was doing better, so I'm not sure I have a whole lot of coping mechanisms stored up at this point.