Thanksgiving came and went. My heartburn seemed to linger. The guests and relatives came and went. The new stove came and stayed and cooked everything up just right. Then a pain and a weight like something very heavy sitting on the left side of my chest came along and stayed too; 
sometimes they were joined by a sort of clammy sweat. Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning. The weight would not lift; I kept sweating. I called my doctor; she wasn’t working, but her nurse said I should go to the emergency room. I didn’t, because that is not the sort of thing I do and, besides, what does a guy who is a nurse know about anything? Instead, I called my cardiologist’s office. I don’t know what I expected, but I was surprised when his nurse said, “Go to the emergency room. Any time you have chest pain you should go to the emergency room. Do you want me to call an ambulance?” I said that wouldn’t be necessary, that I would be glad to drive myself. “When you get there, tell them you are having chest pains,” the nurse said. “They will admit you immediately.” And when I arrived at the emergency room, they did.
I am not much of an emergency room-goer. I have been in an emergency room only four times in my life.
Once was after I was in a minor automobile accident and had a terrific headache from bouncing around inside a tiny, rear-ended Austin America sedan. I remember waiting in the waiting room for a
long time before they called me in, gave me a prescription for Darvon and sent me home. I liked the Darvon just fine and it really helped with the headache, but that was back in the hippie days and some people living in the house where I lived liked the Darvon too. They liked it so much they stole just about all of it, then asked me when I was going to get a refill. “Can you get this refilled?” probably ranked right up there with “Spare change?” among questions hippies asked.
Another time I was taken to the hospital because I started weeping over just how screwed up my life was and couldn’t stop. Of course, I was the one who had screwed it up so badly, but I couldn’t see that through the tears (Hell, I couldn't see it tears or no tears). After a few hours, concerned friends became a little frightened and embarrassed and called my parents. They took me to the emergency room, where a helpful doctor had me pumped full of Demerol (two big shots if I remember correctly) to take the edge off of the crying jag. I cried right on through the Demerol, so they pumped more into me. After a few hours, I calmed down to the sniffling heaves and my parents took me to their house, where my mother blamed the crying jag on an improper diet -- which meant I had been eating food she didn't cook -- and bad friends (they were pretty much the same bunch that stole the Darvon, but they were the only friends I had). She fed me for a few days, washed my clothes and seemed to think I would never need to cry again after that. I think it really surprised her when it happened again a few years later. I didn’t go back to the emergency room that time, and by then even Demerol could not brighten up the hole I was in. That time I had to talk my way out of it. My psychiatrist was named Gomez. He looked like a Latin American dictator and spoke with an accent. He helped me talk. I think my mother always worried about what I said.
It was nearly 40 years before I saw the inside of an emergency room again. That was about three years ago. Apparently having kidney stones or chest pains is like having a key to the emergency room. They are magic, door-opening words. When you show up at the emergency room with kidney stones they let you right in, lay you right down and offer you all kinds of pain killers including Demerol and morphine. I picked morphine. “On a scale of 1-to-10, how would you describe your pain?” they asked. I could only laugh through clenched teeth. Kidney stones are a sure way to find out what it feels like when you venture into the world of the pain that exists way past 10. If they could find a way to give those captured jihadists in Guantanamo Bay kidney stones, they would not have to torture them to get answers. They would simply have to withhold relief and those guys would tell them anything they wanted to know. When they admitted me to the hospital that night, it was not for kidney stones (they don’t put you in the hospital for kidney stones), it was for pain. They gave me a morphine drip with a button I could push every few minutes for more. I loved my morphine drip as much as any jihadist ever loved Mohammed or any Christ-hugging Fundamentalist ever loved Pat Robertson, maybe more. Kidney stones are a revelation in pain, pain elevated to the level of a religious experience, the excruciating pain suffered by true believers forced to live in a world of sin. It is a pain in search of a blast of relief. After morphine there was lithotripsy. After that, there was blessed relief.
And then there was Monday. And Tuesday. Chest pains. Blood pressure. Blood thinner. Baby aspirin (four). An IV. Nitroglycerine under the tongue (it helped and that was a bad sign). Oxygen up my nose. Blood tests. Shots in the arm (I chose that over shots in the stomach). And hours and hours in the emergency room. So 
many hours that I sent my wife and son shopping because, even if I was scared about what was happening to me, I felt uncomfortable with them just sitting there watching. They went shopping. I stayed put in the emergency room, reading and rereading the poster that said blood test results usually took one hour, CT scan results several hours, etc. I watched the time pass on a clock that claimed to be linked to the atomic clock for accuracy. I wondered how many people had died on the narrow bed where I was. Eventually, they admitted me to the hospital. My wife and son sat with me. I watched television. There were blood tests through the night. My chest hurt and the pressure returned. More nitroglycerine. More oxygen. I watched my blood pressure drop below 100, down to 91 over 40-something. The pain went away. The pressure went away. But the nitroglycerine gave me a terrible headache. The nurse gave me Darvocet (it triggered memories of the wreck, the Darvon, the thieving hippies, the weeping, the Demerol). I slept, waking only for blood tests through the night. In the morning, I had a stress test. My cardiologist (I hate it that I am even old enough to say the words “my cardiologist”) said my heart was strong, even stronger under stress. He sent me home with a prescription to kill the acidity in my stomach. He told me to take it easy and come back to see him in six months. I have a hard time taking it easy. I went home and slept for several hours in the afternoon, and for nearly 10 hours through the night. I returned to the office today, but I think I will take the doctor’s advice and take it easy tomorrow.
I feel better, but I still do not know what caused the pain and the pressure in my chest. It was a good Thanksgiving. We enjoyed the relatives. We enjoyed the guests. The food. The wine. We love the new stove. But the holiday is not over yet. I have another appointment with a doctor today.
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