Pains in the … chest

Since late Sunday evening, I’ve had chest pains. Not the heart ripping life-giving blood from my body type pains, but the type that really annoy you, because they keep you from doing anything. Anyway, after enduring this for a day and a bit, I ventured off to my first serious visit to the medical establishment (well, for a possible serious issue, rather than a bump on the skin – “get it off” issue).

So I phoned my insurance company, and said I needed a doctor close to home, that was cute, and they referred me to a couple of medical practitioners (okies, I might not have asked for them to be cute). I called the one down the road, and made an appointment – yes, as in “come in at this time, and the doctor will see you” type of appointment.

After filling out a bunch of forms, and signing away the love child of Bosley and Colby, I got to meet the Physician’s Assistant to go over the first part of the exam (interesting – but efficient – way of doing things, if you ask me). The key point I should make is that this happened within 5-10 minutes of my appointed time. Anyway she did some fun things – sadly no probes – and then went of to “tap it into the system.”

About 10-15 minutes later, this rather cute guy comes in and starts asking me questions. It appears this was “The Doc” and it was time for some real medical practitioning. The cool thing about this visit, is that all his notes went onto his laptop, and he took some additional checking on things, and sent me off to get a chest x-ray (original thought was possibly pleurisy). Another 10-15 minutes go by, and I’m back in the exam room (it was fun explaining to the x-ray chick that I couldn’t remove my nipple ring) – with the x-rays attached to the door.

A few more minutes, and Doc is back in the room telling me all was looking good with my chest (I still think it needs a little work), and that it was more than likely to be walking pneumonia, and that some antibiotics should get me back up and running. He decided to throw in some pain management pills as well, though I wasn’t thrilled to read some of the side effects of this.

All up, it took just over an hour, and having popped one set of the treatment, I’m hopeful that this annoyance will be gone within the week. Of course, the mental anguish has depleted considerably.