Feeling Better ...

As those of you who follow me on me on Facebook or Twitter know, I was in the hospital recently. I've been out for a couple of weeks and I'm just now beginning to feel like myself again.

I went to the emergency room three weeks ago with chest pains and pain in my left arm. Since I've had a previous heart attack (October, 2000), complaints like this are taken very seriously. After a week and a million tests, they determined that it was ... nothing. Well, actually, they didn't determine that it was nothing, but they didn't determine what it was. I had an angiogram; my heart and stent look great. My EKG and EEG both came back normal. There was a slight abnormality in my nuclear stress test, but all other tests after that came back negative. So, all is well.

I've decided to change doctors from my beloved Dr. Hoenshell to someone more local. I say "more local" rather than just "local" because there are no doctors out where we live. My new doctor, Dr. Naresh Ganesh, is only 40 minutes away, rather than 90 minutes away! He was the doctor who saw me on rounds when I was in the hospital, so I decided to stick with him. I like him a lot, although some of his office practices are a bit infuriating. The first time I saw him, I had a 1:15 PM appointment (Tuesday before Thanksgiving, mind you). I was taken back to the examining room at about 3:45 PM. I saw the doctor at 4:50 PM. I left the office at 5:50 PM. Now, I've got things to do, and no one warned me he was always late like this. One reason is probably that he was taking his own vital signs, instead of having a nurse do it. And he does see patients on rounds at the hospital, remember, something fewer primary care physicians are doing all the time.

As I said, I really like the doctor, so I'm going to tolerate his tardiness. He took all the time with me that I needed him to, listened to my concerns and talked with me. And, he touched me while we talked. Nothing inappropriate, just gentle and caring. It helped me feel heard. I liked that.

Now that I'm home, I'm slowly regaining my strength. I spent a week in the hospital on bed rest, so I lost a lot of my mobility. Until today, I felt as though I'd never recover; today, however, I'm starting to feel like my old self. Good! It's about damn time!