Saga -- Part Two

The blood work had come back and nothing was amiss. "There are markers that we see in the blood test that indicate a possible heart attack, but we don't see them," the nurse told us. "The CT scan should tell us more. We should be able to get you in for that in a short while. We're still trying to get you into a room as well for more observation, but it's taking a while," she added.

This wasn't surprising. A big city emergency room, even if it's cleaner and less chaotic than what you see on television, is still a busy place. The public address system called out a similar message with regularity --"ambulance on the way, six minutes out." There were more patients like me in the waiting room and the staff at the hospital was doing its best to get to everyone, but I would have to wait.

That I was waiting seemed like a good sign. "If I were in real danger, they would have wheeled me in right away," I said to my wife.

"That's true, I guess," she said. She had been steady all night, never once betraying a sense of panic. We didn't say a whole lot -- this had already been a very long day for both of us and we were starting to realize that we weren't going to get an answer right away.

After nearly an hour, the doors of the emergency room opened and another nurse came out with a hospital bed. It was my turn. "We have a room now for you. We'll have you go there and we'll be installing an IV port so they can put the dye into you. "Have you ever had a CT scan?" the nurse asked.

"Yes, I've had a number of them, and several MRI tests as well," I replied. "About eight years ago, I had surgery here for a pituitary adenoma and they took a lot of pictures then."

"Well, this won't be as extensive as all that," the nurse said with a smile. "The CT scan will only take about three minutes. They will put some dye into your veins to see what's happening and then take the scan."

I was wheeled into the imaging area of the hospital and saw the machine. It was familiar, but had been updated and was, for the most part, open sided. "Well, this isn't an MRI tube," I said.

The nurse in imaging laughed. "No, this isn't nearly as bad as all that. We are going to put some dye in your IV port. It will feel warm, and then you'll feel like you need to pee, but you won't really need to. Can you make it up onto the bed?" she asked.

"I think so," I said. I managed to do that with a little difficulty, then it was time to enter the scanner. The familiar feeling of warmth and then slight burning was there, just as they predicted. And as they'd promised, it was done within a few minutes.

"Okay, we're going to take you back to your room now," the nurse said. "We should have these read in about 30-35 minutes. The emergency room doctor will see you then and let you know what's next."

So it was back to the room. My wife was waiting. They put me on the monitoring equipment and tested my blood pressure. It was still quite high, over 175. "We'll be giving you some medication to get that blood pressure down," the nurse said. "It's very effective."

"I hope so."

"It is. How is your breathing," she asked. "It looks better."

"Yes, it does seem to be better," I responded. "I'm trying to rest, but I'm not particularly good at this sort of thing. At least I'm trying not to yell at you like some of the other people do."

The nurse laughed. "Yes -- we hear all sorts of things in the emergency room. Sometimes the patients don't like me very much."

"Well, we like you," I said. "Don't know if that counts for much, but I want you to know that."

"Thank you. The doctor should be here in a few minutes."

Next -- the doctor arrives and the results come in.