Rob’s blog in the vast darkness of internet blog’s.

My lung and Med7 in Roseville…

Ok well some of you know what has been going on with me and some of you do not. For those that don’t I have been in the hospital with a collapsed lung. LOL now for most everyone they will ask how did it happen, was it from a car accident or did I fall and hit my chest. The answer is no… I was sitting perfectly still not doing anything at all and my lung collapsed.

Now for the explanation, due to the fact that I am tall and I work as a courier is the reason it happened. When I get in and out of my car all the time my lung rubs against my chest cavity, now the fact that I am tall makes this happen more than it would in shorter people. Because the lung rubbed my chest cavity so much it developed a sort of blister in this area and when that blister popped my lung just collapsed.

Now for the story…

Friday 7/6/2007 around 11:40AM I was sitting in my car listening to music when the left part of my chest started to hurt. By 11:55AM the pain was very sharp and had spread from the mid section of my chest to my left shoulder and back. By this time I was contemplating going to the E.R. because it kind of felt like a mild heart attack, but I decided that it would cost too much money since I don’t have insurance and that more than likely wasn’t a heart attack. Basically I was hoping it would go away on its own. So I get out of my car around noon to go into my 1st stop and had to choke back tears cuz my chest was hurting so bad, I grabbed my stuff and got back into my car to do the rest of my run. At this point the pain was really bad so I took some extra strength Tylenol to help with the pain.  About an hour later the sharp pain had gone and all the remained was a dull chest pain and some minor shortness of breath. At this point I figured it was going away on its own I’ll just sleep it off.

Saturday 7/7/2007 I wake up… PAIN! My chest was hurting so bad when I woke up, I went to walk to the bathroom from my bed and couldn’t even make it half way to the bathroom before I had to stop because I couldn’t breathe. Now I’m worried, which for those of you that know me that isn’t easy to do. I can tolerate pain more than most people and I don’t go to the hospital unless something is really wrong. I decided that whatever  is wrong with me isn’t going away and I should go to the hospital. I decide to do a lil self diagnosis to better equip myself for going to the Hospital. I got on the net and looked up my symptoms. The result that came up was severe heartburn a.k.a. G.E.R.D. this had all of my symptoms except the shortness of breath. It had been mistaken for a mild heart attack by lots of people so I thought this has got to be what I have. Now I just need to make sure so I decided to go to Med7 to get checked out. Since I don’t have medical insurance this place will work great cuz they take walk in’s and they don’t shy away from non insured patients. Now for the Med7 experience. I see the Dr. there and explain my symptoms, they do an EKG, chest X-rays, listen to my chest with a stethoscope, give me an Asprin and check my blood sugar level. At this point I thought that these tests would have shown if there was something really wrong, and they would have if my Dr. would have looked at them right. But he says to me “I can’t see anything wrong with you, but it’s most likely sleep apnea”, I suggest that it may be severe heartburn and he says “yea it could be that too”. Now I say to myself since he thinks it could severe heartburn I can just get some Prilosec or other severe heartburn medicine I should be fine. He then says “your chest pain has not gone away with the asprin i gave you?” to which I say no. He still has not asked me about my shortness of breathe, next he says “well maybe you should go the E.R. and have them take a look to find out for sure what’s wrong with you, but no rush. They can do better tests there than I can do, but it’s probably heartburn or sleep apnea”… lol I think to myself isn’t that the reason why I came here, was to get an explanation of what’s wrong and the treatment for it?!?! So this little adventure cost’s me $328 for the Dr. tell me what I already knew that it was probably severe heartburn. I’m pretty pissed off now due to the fact I feel I wasted that money when I could have just gotten some heartburn medicine. So I just go home, I thought to myself since he didn’t find anything wrong with me, the E.R. will do the same tests they just did. So there is no reason to go to the E.R. especially when he said “maybe you should go but no rush” I’ll just get myself some Prilosec and be good.

Sunday through Tuesday  7/8 – 7/10/2007. These days were the worst for the pain, I bought some prilosec on saturday after I went to Med7. I start the treatment and on the box it states it can take 1-4 days for the prilosec to actually produce results. So I decide to just take it easy and rest in house. The fact that I could hardly walk around without running out of breathe also forced me to stay in. Sunday evening I decided to call in to sick to work since this problem wasn’t going away.

The call backs…

Monday 7/9/2007 I missed a call from Med7 mainly because I was really tired and I didn’t want to get up to get my phone. When I checked the voice mail a woman said to “call them back whenever I get a chance to”. Well I’m feeling like shit and I’m like I’ll call them some other day when I feel better, there’s no reason to call now otherwise they would have said call back asap.

Tuesday 7/10/2007 3pm, I take a long hot shower in hopes of helping relieve some of my chest pain. When I get out of the shower there is a voice mail and a missed call on my phone. I check the voice mail, it’s the staff manager at Med7 calling me to say that it’s urgent that I call them back regarding my treatment and diagnosis that I had on Saturday. So I call this woman back, here tone of voice was a bit concerned when she answered, she say’s ” have you gone to the E.R. or hospital since your visit to us?” to which I reply “no the Dr. said it was sleep apnia or heartburn”. Her tone of voice goes from concerned to panic. She say’s ” Oh… well our Dr. missed it but we send all of our x rays to radiology and radiology found it, your lung has collapsed. You need to go to the E.R. now because this won’t get better on it’s own!” At this point I’m like shit well I better go. Then she says “go to the E.R. tell them you have been to Med7 and that u have a Pneumothorax so that you don’t have to wait and you can go right in”.

Tuesday 7/10/2007 4pm I get to the Kaiser E.R. and within 30 seconds using  a stethoscope only the admittance nurse says to me “Oh! Yea you have no air going in on your left side, your lung is collapsed”.  Shit!!! That’s all I can think of at the moment. So began my treatment and hospital stay. I won’t go into the hospital visit or what was done to me while there or how much it cost right now or even mention the fact I was sent home to die with a collapsed lung. But I will say is this… I am better now… thank god for the AWESOME Nurses and Dr’s that I had while I was at Kaiser.

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