You get a lot of homework done in an ER waiting room….

So I didn’t exactly have the typical Wednesday evening last week. Usually on Wednesdays I get out of class at 3:15, go home for a quick run and a shower, scrounge up a quickie dinner and head to Missional Community with Micah at 6:30pm. This Wednesday, I got out of class and spent the next eight hours reading The Faerie Queene in medical waiting rooms (by the way…FQ is NOT a book you will find on my Good Read page or my Amazon recommendations….just FYI).

So after class, I headed to the ASU walk-in clinic to try to get some answers about my breathing inadequacies. After checking in and waiting for a good hour or so, I finally got a room. Twenty minutes later, I even got a doctor! He was super nice and gave me a breathing treatment – the type an asthma nerd would take (sorry if you have asthma, we all know inhalers are a little nerdy – but I also know they save lives – and I now OWN a $42.00 inhaler – so I’m making fun of you AND ME in a nice way!). The breathing treatment lasted 15 minutes and seemed kinda like smoking a hookah (which I have never done before but have seen pictures of). I then got a chest x-ray and took another breathing test, but the breathing treatment didn’t seem to be helping much. I left the doctor’s office with an inhaler and an appointment to meet with a internal medicine doctor next week. This whole process took a little over 2.5 hours, no biggie. Here are some pics of the adventure. I’m not too concerned about HIPPA for myself clearly… I took all these pics without a flash in flourescent lighting, so I apologize for their horrible qualtiy. I didn’t want the nurses to see me taking pics, because I was pretty sure they would find me strange. “Oh, you can’t breathe…and you are worried about your blog right now???”

Since it was already after 6pm when I got out of the clinic I decided to head straight to Missional Community. However, my doctor called me back as I was walking to my car and changed up plans on me. He looked at my x-rays again with another doc after I left and decided I should go the ER for catscan just in case my breathing probs were being caused by blood clots in my lungs. Since my mom has a blood clotting disease, you bet your bottom dollar that Micah and I were sitting in the ER by 7pm….and we were still sitting there at 10pm. Micah got to leave and get Wendy’s, but they told me I couldn’t eat in case I had to have surgery… it was so fun watching Micah eat my chicken nuggets with the thought of surgery dancing in my head. I went into triage and they took another x-ray (I’m sure radiation twice in one day is super good for you…) and took a blood test (yuck), but they sent me back out to the waiting room to wait and wait and wait some more… Let’s just say I got more homework done on a weeknight than ever before. I know Micah was tired and bored…but he stayed with me the whole time and only complained like twice…

***Sidenote: I don’t really support lying, but if you ever go the ER don’t say your pain level is zero… they push you to the bottom of the list and let everybody else get admitted before you. Say something like “I don’t have any accute pain, but the general discomfort from not being able to expand my lungs all the way would probably put me at a two at least” (Clearly, I learned this the hard way…)

Finally, I got a room and a doc who told me I didn’t need a catscan because my blood test showed no sign of blood clots. Instead they did an EKG on my heart, told me I was safe to wait for my internal med appointment next week and sent me home with a rec for a cardiologist as well. It was a looong night with little results, but at least I know I don’t have blood clots and I got a ton of reading done…hooorah!

Now I am going to go take a puff from my inhaler and try to go for a four mile run…