This all happened on Sunday February 26th.
I’d been having some pain in my chest area for the past few days – pretty much center of the torso, right in the middle. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t anything like appendicitis or heart issues. I had thought originally that it was something like a bruised rib or two somehow, but figured that it was more in the muscular/soft tissue area than on the bones.
I made the decision on Sunday morning to head to the nearby emergency room, since none of the nearby walk-in clinics were available. Fortunately for me, I live just a few blocks from Ridge Meadows Hospital, so just less than 15 minutes walk away.
I was actually triaged very quickly, so not much waiting around in the waiting area. First called to answer some questions to the triage nurse, along with getting blood pressure, temperature and pulse checked. Then sent back to the waiting room and told to fill up one of those little jars. After that, it wasn’t too long before I was in for some quick blood draws, and then out to wait again. It then wasn’t too long before I was called in, given one of those oh-so-fetching hospital gowns and given my own little curtained off area to wait in, in what was called a ‘Raz Zone’. ‘Raz’, for those not familiar, is a ‘Rapid Assessment Zone’ – so saying ‘Raz Zone’ is about as correct as saying ‘PIN Number’ or ‘ATM Machine’. The idea of ‘Raz’ is to reduce overcrowding in emergency departments and reduce wait times. I’m really not sure how effective that was, because it was 2 hours from when I was given that gown to when a doctor came by to see what was going on.
After describing to him the issues, he organized a quick ECG for me to take, as well as getting another blood test done (to test for a cardiac enzyme). That would take around 45 minutes to get that test back. Whee, more waiting.
In the end, the ECG looked good and there were no issues found with the other blood test.
So, I left about 4.5 hours later with a prescription for some pills to help with acid-reflux. It’s possible that may be helping, but it’s still a little early (even today – Tuesday) to know for sure yet.
