Wednesday, June 1, 2011

You can rip your what?

Did you know that you can rip chest muscles/ligaments?  Me neither....

Then I did it...

This weekend...

As I picked Austin up out of his stroller and put him into the minivan.  The pain that I felt in my chest was immediately sent to my head as either being A. Heartburn or B. A Heart Attack.  The best description was a knife in the left side of my chest, but just in one spot.  I could breathe, I wasn't pukey or sweaty.  I could walk and talk. So, I swayed towards option A for 5 hours.  5 painful hours.  I took meds, I rested, then I figured if it was just heartburn I should get up and get ready for the Memorial Day BBQ.  So I vacuumed, I used my Hoover FloorMate and washed the kitchen floors.  I boiled ribs, soaked corn, and baked a pie.  And when I still did not feel better at 2:00PM (it happened about 10:15AM), I told Jim I needed to go to the Doctor.  And you know what: Urgent Care is not open on holidays.  That left me the ER of Northwest Community Hospital.

I heart NWCH. 

Do you know that if you walk into an ER and tell them you are having chest pain that people move around you.  And they move REALLY fast.  Blood, EKG, and Chest X-Ray in 30 minutes flat.  (I should note here that I was not being dramatic, and said over and over to the nurse that I was not having a heart attack because I had looked it up online and WebMD said I wasn't.)  Diagnosis, a torn muscle/ligament in my chest.  Treatment...AWESOME drugs.  I mean, drugs that made me feel like a Friday night at ISU.  Drugs that made me not think so much of the pain, but to become obsessed with the fact that I was sitting in an ER and there was french onion dip and rippled potato chips at home that I really wanted.

Bottom line, I need to lift Austin with my knees and not my back/chest muscles.  Or better yet, I should just have Jim do it.  Lesson learned.