At 2 o'clock this morning I noticed an unusual pain on the left side of my chest. Breathing was uncomfortable and the more I concentrated on it to really FEEL it, the worse it got. It sneered at me and then crept over my shoulder and down my back and so of course by now I was wide awake.
By 4 AM I had pretty well determined that I was not having a heart attack. It wasn't a sharp pain, and I wasn't nauseous, no lightheadedness, no numbness or tingling. Although I admit that I did feel a momentary flash of each of those things as my eyes crossed over the words on the screen.
I've always been like this. I'm not sure I'm a hypocondriac, but I can talk myself into almost any pain or illness, quickly and with an exceptional sense of panic and urgency. Once when I was less than 12 I was watching Marcus Welby, m.d. one summer evening, and the sicker the patient got, the worse I felt. Every time a new symptom appeared, I found I had exactly the same thing. Headache, stomache cramps, heavy sweating, dizzyness...Dr. Welby was really stuck for a diagnosis, scratching his pretty grey head and tapping his clipboard with a ballpoint pen as his patient slowly began to expire in front of him.
By now I was sobbing, I was much too young to die but there it was in front of me, my tender young life was coming to end, probably after the next commercial. My soul was in agony.
Turned out the patient had contracted a parasite when swimming in the Nile on his last trip to Egypt.
I praised God! I had never been to Egypt! I did not have what that guy had! I would live to grow up and have a period!
This afternoon I called Dr. G's office just for reassurance, but nurse Jane must have been very busy because she never returned my call. I sat with the phone in my hand for two hours, but she never called. I thought perhaps she had seen the message and decided what I was experiencing wasn't serious, no biggie, she'd call me tomorrow. She probably had to dash off to do something totally fun with her best girlfriends as soon as her shift was over. Gotta run!
After consulting various other internet resources, I decided it was probably leukemia or something just as dire -- even WebMD sprang up an urgent message telling me to SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY when I described my symptoms. The "Ask A Doctor" website tantalized me with a promise of a quick response because 10 real doctors were waiting to talk to me NOW! After I described my symptoms and hit "submit" I got a dialoge box asking how much I was willing to pay for a response. People on a budget could get a quick anwer for $9, while those with greater means could receive a full diagnosis for $25. Will that be Visa or Master?
Finally a nice young on-call cardiologist named Dr Wang called me back when he saw he had been paged by the answering service. I was reading his bio on-line just as the phone rang.
Rest easy, it's not your heart. If it's still bugging you tomorrow, contact your primary care doc and maybe get a chest xray, but from what I was describing there was no need to head to the ER, and certainly nothing to worry about.
Took the good doctor less than 5 minutes to set my spinning mind at ease.
Took Dr. Welby a whole hour.
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