A totally different experience in the ER this time.

To cut a long story short, I was in and out in under 2 hours.

Had an ECG (the fright of which would have killed me if I was having a heart attack, which I wasn’t, thank God). Funny though, they didn’t give me an ECG on Monday. (Everything was okay on all the basic tests they did).

Was whipped in to see the Doctor right away, a different Doctor to the one I saw last time, of the male persuasion, and by crikey, apparently just past puberty in age by the looks of him.

Anyhow, told him the long story of what happened on Monday, and he goes off to fetch the xrays taken, as apparently they were taken and delivered to my doctor immediately on Monday, prior to the formal “reporting” process. Today’s Doctor wanted to look at the final formal report, and take a look for himself.

Apparently (yes, a THIRD apparently), this severe chest infection I have actually has a name now (at least according to the report) - PNEUMONIA. :eek_wp:

So, he explains, this pain is to be expected, and the infection was not relegated to one side only as I thought was the case, hence the pain on the left side now.

Now onto the story of drugs. On Monday I was given a prescription for two types of antibiotics and a pain killer. The pain killer is a narcotic. Seeing as the hospital pharmacy had closed by the time I was checked out on Monday evening, the Doctor gave me drugs to go on with until I could get to a chemist with the prescription the next day.

I went to get the prescription filled, and the pharmacist pointed to the BIG LETTERED STAMP on the prescription saying: “NOT VALID FOR NARCOTICS OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL” with pursed lips, so feeling like crap, I asked him for the strongest pain medication not requiring a prescription I could get, which he supplied.

So today, I took that prescription with me to the Emergency Room and discussed the problem with my Doctor, and his exact words were “Well, that doesn’t really mean anything…” (in reference to the BIG LETTERED STAMP statement) and I swear the :eek_wp: emoticon was probably the face I pulled in return. “No problems” he said, “You’ll be able to fill that prescription at the hospital pharmacy today. They’re open right now.”

No problem, I thought, I’ll just walk my chest-pain, short of breath self around to the hospital main entrance and find the damn pharmacy and I’ll be just. fine.

So, around to the pharmacy I wheezed, at 12:55pm, just as they were about to close for their one hour lunch break.

Of course the script was no good. Scripts for narcotics need to be written separately with all sorts of special conditions.

“No problem” I said to the pharmacy assistant, “I’ll just walk my chest-pain, short of breath self BACK to Emergency, try to see the Doctor again, then walk my chest-pain, short of breath self BACK to you, by which time you’ll be closed for lunch and I’ll have to wait an hour to get the prescription filled.”

“Yep, that’s about it unfortunately.” she said.

So I did and I did and I did.

The upside to all of this is that I bumped into my friend Didy in the main area of the hospital who was there picking up her dad. I haven’t talked to her for AGES, so there’s a bit of yin with my yang this time around. She also had to wait for a prescription to be filled, so we sat, had lunch, coffee and a good chat while we waited.

Didy deserves a whole post to herself, so that’ll be next time.

I’m off to bed.

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