AN E.R. STORY

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a touch neurotic. Okay fine, Woody Allen and I are kindred spirits. Well a few months before Alex was born I started to get some serious heartburn - I was stressed out. We were having another baby. And I hadn’t worked in over two years. I think the heartburn was warranted. But when I tried to find some new kind of relief after the conventional meds like Prilosec and Zantac weren’t doing the trick, I ended up looking for answers online. Bad idea. If you’re the slightest bit of a hypochondriac, don’t look for solutions online because 9 times out of 10 those solutions are that you have some kind of rare and fatal disease. And in my case I learned that the symptoms of heartburn can often overlap with those of a heart attack. And since I have high triglycerides (which if not treated can lead to heart disease) I thought for a fleeting moment that it seemed like a plausible scenario. And then I remembered that I take meds for my tris and that heart attacks don’t generally last for three straight months.

Needless to say, when Jen finally went into labor in the middle of the night, my heartburn flared up. So much so that the nurse in the delivery room looked at me and said, “You all right?” I said, “Just some heartburn.” She then put her hands on her hips and said, “Well if you pass out, you’re getting a first class ride down to the E.R. even if that means missing the birth of your child.” I told her I was fine. Well, ten hours later, after Alex was born and I had shed a little tear of joy, the same nurse saw me still rubbing my chest and said, “When your wife’s asleep tonight, slip down to the E.R. around 4:00 AM. There’s never a wait then, unless a bunch of people died at the same time. Anyway, tell’em Shakina sent you and they’ll give you something for that heartburn of yours.”

3:30 AM rolls around and thanks to the Gestapo “wake up and feed your baby every ten minutes” tactics of the hospital’s La Leche League, I hadn’t slept in almost 48 hours and I still had some pretty bad heartburn so I dragged myself out of my uncomfortable cot and walked downstairs to the E.R. And just like Shakina told me, the place was a ghost town. I gave them my name and within five minutes I was sitting comfortably in a private station in the E.R. where a friendly doctor came in, asked me about my symptoms and so I didn’t sound like a complete idiot for visiting the E.R. for heartburn I told her about my high triglycerides. She said she would order up a G.I. Cocktail (a thick green concoction made of Prilosec, Zantac, Mylanta and lidocaine) and a quick E.K.G. as a precaution and send me on my way with a prescription for some new heartburn medication. Sounded like a plan. So I sucked that cocktail down like a shot of Jäger and was feeling better in literally seconds (the lidocaine numbs the whole system). And like a well-oiled machine, a minute later I got the E.K.G. and just like that I was declared healthy as an ox. While I waited to get released Jen called me on my cell and told me that her OBGYN stopped by and said she had the va-jay-jay of champ and the pediatrician gave her blessing to take the baby home a day early so Jen was upstairs packing. I told her I would be right up. Or so I thought…

So while the doctor is signing my release papers, I get up to stretch my legs, but I swoon. I tell her it was just a head rush from lying on the bed for a while or maybe it was from not sleeping for 50 straight hour, but the doctor didn’t want to take any chances and immediately orders blood work, a chest x-ray and an I.V. of fluids…all because I told her about my high triglycerides.

Six, count them, six hours later I get my diagnosis. “You’re tired.” She then signs my release papers, sending me off into the world to see my new baby…and my irate wife who was released four hours ago. That's when the heartburn returned.