A Trip to the ER

Saturday didn't turn out so restful.  Most of the day was, I guess.  And, I got my nasty front porch swept and cleaned up some.  But James had been having some chest pains since Friday afternoon, and they continued and seemed to be getting worse.  I wasn't too concerned at first because he's young and healthy and active, but it just seemed to get worse and didn't appear to be heartburn or a pulled muscle or anything.  So we decided to drive him to Knoxville to the ER.  Thankfully, my mom and dad were in town camping, and I was able to get in touch with them.  I knew Ashley and Briana could handle supper and getting the little ones to bed, but they aren't real thrilled about staying the night alone, and I knew we would probably be late. 

    We got there at about 6:00, they took him right in and ran an EKG, blood tests and an x ray.  They also gave him a nitroglycerin, which helped.  It was almost 9:00 before the dr. finally came back in with the results.  Everything seemed to look okay, but they wanted to be able to rerun the blood work, so they wanted to keep him overnight.  James didn't want to stay overnight, so the dr. consulted with another and decided it would be just as good to wait until 11:00 to rerun the tests..  If everything was fine then, they would send him home with more nitro, and he was to come back if it got worse.  So, that is what we did.  We got home at about 12:45 Sun. morning.

   He had some pain yesterday, but not quite as much, and he took it easy most of the day, except we went to Briana's piano recital.  He was supposed to go back in today for a stress tests and some others, but found out this morning that the hospital doesn't take our insurance, so they wouldn't run them.  His dr. through this same hospital takes our ins, so now he's got to go in to see him this afternoon, then he can order the tests, and the ins. is supposed to cover it. 

   Now we also have the question of whether they are going to cover the 6 hour ER visit Sat. night.  The billing dept says they think they will, because even though they aren't on our preferred provider list, ins. will usually take anyone's ER when it is something like chest pains.  We have such an outrageous deductible like it is that we were already probably going to have to pay $1,000 or more out of pocket. I can't imagine what the total bill will be. 

    So, now James hasn't been able to eat since 10:00 last night, his appt. is at 2:30, and they still don't want him to eat just in case they can get him in for the tests late this afternoon.  The tests will last approx. 5 hours. 

   Hopefully, we'll get some answers this week.