A Long, Strange Trip -- the Beginning

(I get the feeling this is likely to be a long story, so I thought I'd better break it up into chapters.)

Okay, this story starts with a head cold. Nasty, but simple and straightforward. It's the cold I mentioned in the previous post about the Turks Head Jugglers practice session. Lots of coughing, bringing up that greenish yellow glop, sinus cleaning (for some details, see http://www.webmd.com/allergies/sinus-pain-pressure-9/neti-pots) and related activities. Tedious, but nothing worse.

On the Saturday described in the previous posting (that would be March 5th), I felt that I was coming out of the cold and should be fine in a couple more days. And on that basis, I scheduled a trip to Baltimore on the following Tuesday to be with my Dad and brother to finish some paperwork. (I had delayed this visit because of my cold, and was eager to get this paperwork stuff out of the way. You see, my Dad's in a retirement facility, and the staff there really doesn't want to see you if you're possibly contagious.)

So on the Tuesday, suffering from nothing other than a dry cough, I packed the paperwork into the car and headed south. After 20 minutes or so of driving, I felt a pain in my chest. Right over my heart. It came and went sporadically, and on a Pain Scale of 0 to 10, it was about a 3.

(Bit of explanation might be helpful here: You may recall that I've had some blood clot issues over the last several years. And the really dangerous part of these "Deep-Vein Thrombosis" episodes is that part or all of the clot might break loose and travel with the blood flow back to the heart and/or lungs. This can be fatal and, in fact, killed a nephew of mine just six months or so ago. So unexplained pain in the chest is something that calls for close attention. Especially if it's camped out right over the heart. And now back to the story.)

As I drove, I decided that the chest pain might simply be a muscle spasm caused by several weeks of inactivity. Because of the cold. And that spasm might be aggravated because the spot in question was right where my seat belt crossed my chest. Or it could be a blood clot broken loose. Not a nice set of choices.

I drove to my brother Warren's house in suburban Baltimore and found, after walking aroud for a while and having lunch, that the pain disappeared completely. So I decided to forget it. I mean, you can't live your life chasing down every little ache and pain and assuming the worst. You know? You'd wind up living in a sterilized plastic bubble, afraid to do anaything at all... But, come to think of it, I did tell Warren what to do in case I collapsed. Just in case. I mean, you can't just ignore the signs your body gives you that things aren't right. You know? There's a balance here.

So Warren and I drove to Dad's facility and got the necessary paperwork squared away. And all this time, my chest felt just fine -- much to Warren's relief. Oh, and mine too.

On my drive back to West Chester, the pain in my chest returned, but it was registering a 6. I called Deb on my cell phone and asked her to get in touch with our family doctor and ask for an opinion as to what to do. The answer came back quite quickly and was unambiguous: find the closest Emergency Room and sign in.

Mildred, my GPS system and close companion for occasions like this, told me that the closest hospital was in Jennersville, and so we left the road for home and started off towards J'ville.

Fortunately, the ER had little ongoing business when I showed up. So I got an X-Ray and a CT scan of the area around my heart in short order. Since J'ville is a rather smallish hospital and I had shown up after 5:00 PM, they had to send the CT scan to Michigan to have a radiologist there analyze what was going on. (They used to send such things to India, but had too much trouble with the accent...) But hey, isn't technology wonderful? Sometimes? Maybe most of the time? I mean I'm sitting in the ER of a small-town hospital in the late afternoon getting (what I hoped was) high-quality analysis of my scan in real time!

By this time, Deb had driven to J'ville -- God bless her! -- so the two of us waited for the 30 minutes or so it took to get the analysis done. And the ER doctor came back and said: "Good news! It's pneumonia!" Not something one hears often, I will grant you, but given the alternative (i.e., a life-threatening blood clot), pneumonia was, in fact, good news. He told us the scan showed no trace of blood clotting aroud the heart. Yay!!

The doc told us that they wanted me to stay overnight -- and possibly two nights -- just in case. This seemed excessive to me, I mean I walked in under my own steam and felt pretty much okay, except for this dry cough. But he rumbled on and on about "leaving against medical advice" and having to signing releases and so forth, so it seemed easier just to stay.

Which I did. And during the next two days, I received antibiotics via IV's and nebulizer treatments for the cough. And other than that, I just tried to figure out how to stay sane. Because as far as I was feeling, I was still just going home from Baltimore, and taking 48-plus hours to drive 80 miles seemed a bit much. But Deb had brought me books and sudoku puzzles, and that was a big help. And the food was actually pretty good.

So that might have been the end of it. The antibiotics clearing out the pneumonia bacteria and I leave J'ville on Thursday, feeling great.

It hasn't worked out that way. More in the next chapter. Stay tuned. (Geez, I wish I knew what to do about this dry cough!)