Field trip!

Okay, not really. This is a good one; you'll need to be seated so that you don't injure yourself from a) shock and pity, or (more likely) b) laughing.

I was in the basement getting a casserole dish off a shelf. We have a small kitchen so a lot of my larger kitchen items are on shelves in my laundry room. Currently our fair city also has a problem with Asian Lady Beetles and Boxelder bugs. Ewwww. So my laundry room has the highest bug population of any room in my house, and as I was pulling out the casserole I spied a cobweb and a bug on my wrist.

I freaked out a little and stood up quickly, rotating to my left a little, and horrible shooting flames of pain attacked my upper body, specifically the left side of my chest. Pain so bad I had to lean on the dryer for support while I caught my breath. I discovered the bug was dead and got rid of it and figured I had pulled a muscle, so I waited a minute and then went upstairs to start dinner.

This gets long and boring in the middle, so I'll cut to the chase:

I called the husband, who was leaving work in a few minutes and said he would cook dinner.

I lay (laid?) down on my bed and discovered it was painful and almost impossible to get back up again.

I called the Nurse Line of our insurance company because the pain was not subsiding. She advised me to take aspirin and call an ambulance. Okay, Lady, so you think I'm having a heart attack and .... omigod, what do I do?

Call husband on cell phone. He is on his way. Get kids to grab jackets and put on shoes; put them in the car and wait in driveway for long minutes.

Go to ER where pulse is normal, BP is normal, oxygen sat is 100%, no shortness of breath, no numbness ... nurse realizes my panic and says, it is NOT cardiac. Thank you. I mean, I knew that, but when people start telling you to call 911, ummmm, well, yuck. (And for the record, I am far too cheap to call an ambulance. My god, I am SO not paying that bill! And my insurance is through a mega multinational corporation and is very good compared to most people, but my coverage has eroded so much in the 10 years I've been married I think it's a travesty).

Doctor comes in, nice guy, good bedside manner (no, not like THAT, you pervs!) tells me he wants a chest x-ray to rule out any goofy lung collapses that might come from wrenching one's body as I did mine, says x-rays look fine, and sends me home with orders to ice my ribs, take acetominophen or ibuprofen and not to lift anything for a few days. Oh, and he says today I will probably be more sore than yesterday.

So I've got that going for me.