The hits just keep on coming!

Yesterday started out in a weird way for me. I never sleep past 6 a.m., but yesterday, after a fitful night's sleep, drifted into a very sound sleep around 5:00 a.m.I thought I was dreaming and hearing a distant phone ringing, but after the ring increase in volume, I realized it was no dream. I jumped out of bed and looked at the clock. It was 8:30 a.m. On the phone was one of my daughters, who calls every morning to check on me.

The day seemed to go downhill from that wakeup call because later that afternoon, I began to have chest pains. At first, I didn't think anything about them, but when they didn't go away, I began to get worried. It felt like a deep, aching pain right in the center of my chest. I'd never felt that way before so I called the nurse at the radiation clinic and told her what was happening. She asked me to take my blood pressure and give her the results. My blood pressure was 155/91 and my pulse was racing. She told me to call 911.

When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics began working on me. They hooked up a 12 lead EKG and began to run the test. As the strip came out of the machine, one of the paramedics said, "she's throwing PVCS." I wasn't surprised by that term because my cardiologist had mentioned it before at one of my office visits. PVCs are premature ventricular contractions. That means the ventricle beats before it's supposed to beat and throws off the heart rhythm.

I was strapped to a gurney and put in the ambulance where 3 paramedics began working on me. The first thing they did was hook me up to oxygen and then gave me 4 baby aspirin. Next they began trying to find a place to insert an IV line. When you're a breast cancer patient who's had lymph nodes removed, it complicates things. You aren't supposed to have any blood pressures, IVS or needle sticks to your arms because it can exacerbate Lymphedema.

They tried to find a good vein in each of my ankles. Those were too small. So they told me they'd have to use my left arm, the one with the least amount of lymph nodes removed from it. I watched as first one EMT and then the other poked and prodded on me trying to find a vein. Now those IV needles aren't little and it feels like you're having bamboo shoved up underneath your fingernails...in a word, it hurts! They started in my hand and gradually moved up my arm. In total, they tried 6 times in my arm, twice in m ankles. The last EMT told me that if he couldn't get it, they'd wait til the hospital could do it. I asked why an IV was needed and was told if they gave me nitroglycerin, it could make my blood pressure bottom out quickly and the only way they could bring it back up was to pump IV fluids.

I arrived at Piedmont Newnan Hospital around 4:30 p.m. The EMTS transported me from the triage area into a room and the hospital nurse came in and began her assessment. After asking a zillion questions, she hooked me up to oxygen and another 12 lead EKG. Then she came at me with a needle. After 3 attempts, the nurse called in a retired firefighter who specialized in placing IVS. His name was Keith. Keith took his time and looked all over my arm for a suitable place to insert the IV. After about 10 minutes, he had an IV line in and ready, but no fluids were administered. 

The nurse was able to draw blood from the newly inserted IV and began running a Tronipin test. That test is one that looks for cardiac biomarkers. The biomarkers, if elevated, indicate heart attack or other cardiac damage. After she'd completed her test, I was sent to the XRAY department for chest XRAYS. After the films were done, I was taken back to the room to wait.

Apparently, last night was a crazy, unusual night at the hospital. The nurse came in several times to apologize for the long wait. She said they had many PSYCH patients in triage and were short staffed. Along with those patients, she said there were many people who had come in thinking they had EBOLA because of the recently televised case that had popped up in Texas.

I waited for hours. Around 10:00 p.m. they came in to get me for a CT scan with contrast. When I got to the CT room, the nurse there looked at the IV and said it wasn't in the vein deep enough for the contrast to flow through so she refused to administer it and sent me back to the room. After waiting another 15-20 minutes, Keith, the retired firefighter, came back in the room again to remove the first IV and reinsert a new one. He'd almost run out of options because I had been stucked so many times and he couldn't use one of the previously punctured sites. Finally, after twisting my arm around and back, he found a spot on the underneath side of my forearm. It was very painful to have the IV there but I sucked it up and just dealt with the pain. They had to do the CT and they had to have an IV for the contrast. When he was done, Keith contacted the transport department again and I was on my way back to the CT lab.

If you've never had a CT with contrast, let me tell you...it is a weird feeling when the dye goes into your body. You feel an overwhelming warmth, like hot, molten lava flowing through your veins starting at your arm and working its way down your body. The strangest sensation was when it reached my abdomen and then all of a sudden my pelvic area. I wish they had taken the time to explain how I was going to feel because I really thought I'd wet my pants right there on the CT table! The warm liquid gives you that sensation but I didn't know that until after the fact! After the CT I was taken back to the room to wait again.

At 12:00 a.m. the doctor came in and said my XRAYS, CT, BIOMARKERS, and all the blood work looked okay but they needed to run another Tronipin test again. The nurse came in to draw more blood and run the test. At 1:00 a.m. the doctor came in to tell me that they were going to let me go home if I'd promise to follow up with a cardiologist today.

Jamie, my youngest daughter, and I left the hospital at 1:30 a.m. and headed home to try and get a few hours of sleep. We were both exhausted. I tried my best to be quiet and not wake my sleeping husband, but he immediately woke up to get an update. (He'd been with me at the hospital until Jamie arrived and then had to leave so he could get up and go to work at 5:00 this morning.) After I told him what was going on, he turned back over and went to sleep. I lay there for hours trying to relax and calm down enough to go to sleep.

This morning, I woke up around 6:30 a.m. At least I'd gotten a few hours of sleep. Today I'll go to have my radiation treatment done and then I'll head off to the cardiologist for a followup. My arms and ankles are black and blue from poor needle sticks. I hope the cardiologist doesn't think I'm a druggie! I just hope he can figure out what caused the chest pains last night and hopefully help me not to ever go through that again. It's a very scary feeling when your body is doing something you have no control over. I'll keep you posted as I find out more information. Hopefully, this was just another blip on the radar....