Mrs Duncan walked into my office at home at about 7:15pm this evening, not looking too clever (as in a bit pale). I asked if she was okay - got a bit of a chest pain. I asked when did it start - about an hour ago. Short of breath? - yep, a bit. Any pain in any arm? - Yep. Which one? - left. Oh sh*t was my first thought as that's classic symptoms of a heart problem. Right, we're going off to A&E I said. Had to call the neighbours to see if they could come and be in the house with Cameron as he was in bed by then and obviously didn't want to have to drag him out with us.
I had thought of calling an ambulance but as the hospital was just over 5 minutes drive away I knew I'd be quicker. We were there in 3 minutes.
Explained the symptoms at the A&E reception and after a very short wait we were straight in to be seen and she was hooked up to ECG and all the gumph. They took blood to test for any sign of enzymes that shouldn't be there, was given Nitrate spray to help easy any pain, was taken for a chest X-ray and also given an elephant strength dose of painkillers over the course of the time we were there (about 2.5 hours).
At that point they'd planned on keeping her overnight to do further tests, but after all this had been done over the course of a few hours and blood result, x-rays back etc. they were confident that it wasn't heart related as she reacted better to the painkillers and not the nitrate spray and the X-rays looked okay - plus she wasn't a high risk category for any heart stuff i.e. wasn't a smoker, overweight, no real bad family history of it and was young.
So, they gave her the all clear and sent her home - thankfully. They couldn't say what it was exactly, but was more muscle/skeletal than anything else.
Was a bit of an unexpected excursion that I hadn't expected this evening, but the hospital said that I did exactly the right thing. With my Mum, and her side of the family, having had heart issues - attacks, bypasses etc. - I knew the symptoms involved and all the bits related to it so it was symptoms that IMO weren't to be ignored.
Thankfully all a 'false alarm' in the end but it just reminds you how things 'may' change in the blink of an eye!
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