Scary Health Scare

I would not like to have to redo my day yesterday. I had a scary health scare. Everything turned out okay, but I (or maybe my doctor) scared my family and close friends. I'm sorry for that. Oh, let me share....

On Sunday night I started feeling kind of weird, but I wasn't sure in what way and by Monday night I finally figured out that it was that I couldn't get a deep breath. My shallow breathing was fine, but when I tried to get a deep breath, my chest got tight. Tuesday morning I called my doctor and made an appointment, but unfortunately my doctor (who I love) is off on Tuesdays so I had to see the nurse practitioner (who I didn't love). My breath sounds were normal, my oxygen levels were fine, and I had no history of asthma which meant that the next step was ruling out more serious things. First, they gave me an EKG in the office, which came back normal. She then ordered a huge list of blood tests, and chest x-rays for me to do first thing the next morning (which was yesterday) because some of them needed to be done on a fast.

I went to the hospital first thing in the morning for all the tests and got a call a couple hours later while I was at my Mom's Group that one of the blood test that can indicate a pulmonary embolism was elevated and I needed to go back to the hospital at 2:00 for a CT scan. This, of course, turned me into an emotional wreck for the rest of the day. Oh, my poor friends at Mom's Group. I was a mess. If you google pulmonary embolism I fit the profile because of my recent knee surgery. I didn't quite realize how scared my family was. Matt was a mess. I also had some communication problems after the CT with my doctor's office. When all was said and done, all tests came back normal.

I finally got to talk to MY doctor, God bless her. I paged her through the on call service I was so frustrated. She was literally reading through my chart on the phone with me trying to get caught up since she was off for most of my "case." She described the blood test result differently than they did on the phone earlier that day. They probably should have never been throwing around the words "pulmonary embolism" and just said that they needed to run another test. Then, if I asked they could have explained that they needed to rule that out, but maybe I wouldn't have been so scared. That elevated results could be from a million different things.

So, what is giving me shortness of breath? She said since we've ruled out cardiac issues and other serious stuff that it may be allergy induced asthma, so I have already started some new medication. We'll see if it works.

Today, I am thankful for a new day. I think God knew I needed some sunshine today and a day with no appointments. Phew.