No tiara for the pristine princess--or, emerging from an emergent condition

The high point of my recent 24-hour immersion in the health care maelstrom occurred when a doctor looked at an MRI and pronounced my brain "pristine." Unfortunately, though, they don't give out tiaras for pristine brains, and I don't even want to think about how much the hospital is going to charge for all the tests required to inform me that there's probably nothing wrong.

It all started on Wednesday when I was sitting at the desk in my office and suddenly felt like I was having a heart attack--a not unreasonable assumption considering my family history of heart problems and the pain and pressure in my chest and jaw. The pain subsided after about five minutes, only to be replaced by numbness in my right arm and the right side of my face and tongue.

So I called my doctor's office, where they told me to go to the Emergency Room immediately, which I did. I drove myself there (it's only a few blocks) and walked in feeling pretty much okayish and I was immediately surrounded by a flurry of people focused on determining whether I was having a stroke. I don't know how many people were in the room but I can tell you that it's no picnic trying to comply with the resident's request that I read five sentences while a phlebotomist was jabbing a needle in my arm. (She got it on the first jab. If anyone deserves a tiara, she's the one.)

Next came a barrage of tests and the decision to keep me under observation overnight, and they weren't talking about passive observation: sleep was impossible given the constant stream of people needing to ask me the same questions and put me through the same tests over and over and over.  (Please, if you love me, don't ask me my birthdate or tell me to touch my finger to my nose any time soon). I got poked and prodded and hauled off to CT--they wouldn't let me walk anywhere even though I kept insisting that I felt fine. As test results trickled in, I kept hearing that there was probably nothing wrong but they were going to run a few more tests just to be sure.

By morning I was still in the dark about what had caused my alarming episode and I really wanted to go home, but they told me early in the morning that they needed to run just one more test and then they'd release me. Great, I thought, I can make my 11:00 meeting!

Ha!

The test got postponed again and again, and I was left to my own devices for another six hours, with nothing to do but watch home improvement shows on a TV set so high on the wall that it hurt my neck to look at it. My cell phone had long since died and I had not had the foresight to carry a book or laptop computer with me when I left my office. I was what they call emergent, but now all I wanted to do was emerge from the hospital and go back to whatever semblance of normal life I could manage after a sleepless night and an onslaught of health care.

I have to say that every single person I encountered at the hospital was helpful and competent, and I have no complaints about the care I received except to note that six hours is a long time to spend waiting for anything, much less an unpleasant medical test. I've endured dozens of CT scans over the years but the MRI scan of my brain was the worst, triggering my claustrophobia and threatening a full-blown panic attack. But I managed my breathing and remained calm by mentally taking myself outside the confined space and imagining my favorite hike at Lake Katharine, which reminded me that there's a whole big world out there outside the big noisy machine.

In the end I emerged from the hospital with a wobbly diagnosis--I may have suffered a bad case of heartburn or a migraine variant, but it may have been a TIA, the kind of mini-stroke that doesn't cause lasting damage but may portend worse strokes to come. So I'm on a couple of new medications and I'm due for a follow-up in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, I feel fine, if a little ridiculous over causing all that fuss and bother (and expense--I don't even want to think about it) over what might have been indigestion, but on the other hand, I keep reading about women who ignore heart-attack symptoms and then get suddenly struck down. So I guess I'm relieved that everything seems to be perfectly fine, and if nothing else, I can hold on to the assurance that no matter how hard I may be working my brain, it's still in pristine condition. Here's hoping that it stays that way for a long time to come.