A Series of Unfortunate Events

I really have to stop saying I have a Nothing Weekend out loud. Every time I do something goes weirdly wrong. Take this weekend for instance. 3:30 pm on Friday someone asks me at work if I had any plans. I said no, nothing. A little over half an hour later I am experiencing chest pains so bad I can't take a breath without feeling like someone is jabbing a knife into my left side. This lasts for a few minutes and then leaves as mysteriously as it appears, although I feel a bit strange afterwards. A half hour later, by the time I get home, my left arm has gone numb and tingly from the shoulder to my fingertips and it feels as if someone has poured cold water inside of it. Now, I'm not usually one to be a hypochondriac, but when something weird happens that I can't find any explanation for and that doesn't seem interested in leaving, I do something about it. So I called the doctor's office and they told me to go to the ER. I sat for a minute and thought that seemed a little extreme, but then decided that if I didn't go and it was something serious, I'd be kicking myself later. So off I went to the nearest ER, figuring chest pains and a numb arm were nothing to be messing with.

I go through the whole triage thing where the nurse takes my blood pressure and it reads 120/84. Holy crap, I say, that's high! No, no, she says. It's fine. Noooo, I tell her, it's not, my blood pressure is usually 115/70. She tells me she is unconcerned about it so I let it go. While I'm waiting in chairs to get a bed and to see a doc, this husband comes in quite hysterical and says they have to help him, it's his wife. A couple of paramedics and nurses rush outside to help this woman, who is unconscious into the ER. I can't tell what is going on, but she seems halfway awake at this point and it adds a little excitement to sitting there doing nothing. I know, I shouldn't use other people's distress as entertainment but dammit it'd been two hours since I arrived and I needed something!

Anyway, I finally get in and the nurse gives me an EKG which meant sticking a bunch of blue things all around my boob and my stomach and two on my legs. They took a reading and then another nurse comes in and tries to draw blood out of my right arm. She gets a vein but no blood. "I can't get any blood, " she tells me. "Oh," I respond, "I should have mentioned, I keep all my blood in the other arm."

So, after the bloodletting, they go off and I am left alone, only to realize Unconscious Woman is in the bed next to me, our lives separated by a thin curtain. She is awake and yelling for her pain meds between crying jags while her husband tries to calm her down. I decide to eavesdrop to get the full scoop. Between questions by the doctor, more waiting, a chest x-ray, more waiting and a final consult with the doctor, I discover the woman had a baby a few weeks ago. The pain meds were for the episiotomy. She missed her dose when she passed out and now felt as if she were being ripped in two all over again. They gave her a percocet in the end. Me on the other hand, with my chest pain and numb arm got zip. Perhaps I should have screamed and wailed as well. The woman had passed out from stress and sleep deprivation. I, on the other hand, was left with no diagnosis.

"Is there any other symptoms you can think of to tell me," the doc asks. "Well," I said, "I have the song Fly Me to the Moon stuck in my head. Can you give me something for that?" He shook his head and left the curtained area with a chuckle. Apparently he thought I was joking.

In the end, everything looked great, the cute doc said. Bloodwork, xray, EKG, all great. Probably a pinched nerve was his guess. So by 2:30 am I was on my way home from my adventure in the ER with a clean bill of health.

But that wasn't the end of my strange misfortune. The following night I was helping Maxx assemble her daughter's new bed. But when I went to pick the plastic wrapped mattress up off the wood floor, I got a series of static shocks. About fifteen I think. I could feel the electric current shooting up my middle finger and let out a yelp. And a few curses as well I believe. By the time we finished the bed, I told her my finger felt kind of strange and I couldn't bend it. By the time I got home, it was swollen and I couldn't straighten or bend it. It's starting to mend. I can straighten it now, but bending still proves a bit of a problem. Who knew electrocution could do that? You learn something new every day...

Thankfully Sunday came and went without incident. I still however have the song Fly Me to the Moon lodged in my cranium. It may require surgery to remove.