I'm not dead, yet.
So yeah. Thanks to a helpful call with Nat and Adam, I kinda have a game plan now, which is to get prednisone from a helpful physician. The problem? There's this nagging thing called the Truth which I keep being stupid enough to tell people. I have hives, and my chest hurts. But do I just tell people that I have hives? Noooo, I tell them I have chest pain too. Because I'm a dumbass, and I can't keep my mouth shut. I should know the medical system. Or at least, you'd think with being the kid of a doc, volunteering + working in a hospital for 3 years, and reading all these books on nursing for the possible career change that I'd know the fears of malpractice. You'd think I'd know not to alarm them and be handwashed off to someone else. But I'm still a dumbass.
Me to physician's office: "Hi, can I get an appointment? I'm going to be in town and I'm having an allergic reaction to something - hives and a bit of pain in my chest."
Physician's office: "PAIN IN YOUR CHEST? OMG GOES TO URGENT CARE NOW PLEEZ!"
Hrr, ok.
*30 minute drive in rush hour to Urgent Care that is ok by my insurance.*
Me to urgent care: "Hi, do you take care of allergic reactions?"
Urgent care:
"Why yes! Please sit in our small, espanol-blasting, optimistically not-too-many-people-in-front-of-me waiting room and fill out these forms."
...
"Hmm...it says you have chest pain here?"
uh-oh.
"Did you know that chest pain means that you should go to the ER? No, seriously. You're like, urgently dying on us right now, and even though you've waited for 20 minutes here at U.S. Deathworks Urgent Care, you need to go wait 5 hours in the emergency room for someone to help you. Because you know, it's CHEST PAIN. That means you're practically dead. And we don't do dead. I'm just going to shred these forms and any evidence that you ever stopped in, ok? Taataa!!!"
Hmm. Well, it's a good thing I'm about to die, because these hives are taking over my face. And that's just not pretty. It's also a good thing I don't give a shit what other people think, because I'm starting to think that the stares I'm getting in the elevator might not be because of my gorgeous facial structure. On the plus side, I've always wanted to look like Lt. Commander Warf, and if I keep this up, I'll definitely have the forehead lumps well developed in time for Halloween.
Anyways, you can tell I didn't bother going to the emergency room. It's because I'm asian, isn't it? I just can't bring myself to 1) bother the extremely busy ER with non-life-threatening itchiness, and 2) I don't want to pay the 50$ co-pay or the ??? bill afterwards. I forgot 3) I'd rather spend 5 hours not sitting in the ER. That's kinda a big one for me. Oh, and 4) For god's sake, I'm pretty sure I'm not dying here, people! Granted, two days ago when it was absolutely awful it did feel like I was dying, but it went away! Well, most of it.
I'm really thankful for dad and J's dad, because they've kept me lucid enough to realize these facts. And they know the jerking around that our LOVELY medical system can inflict, and how to avoid it. The chest pain could be some cracked sternum cartilage. Or possibly pneumonia that hit with the allergies. It could be multiple things that aren't going to kill me...I just need to find a doctor that has the time to listen and figure it out.
And this is why I need a good family practitioner in the bay area instead of putting off finding one and just going home for appointments. Luckily, the Workers Comp. Dr. who gave me my nerve conduction test today recommended a good ob/gyn and a good endocrinologist - a serendipitious conversation that started with her asking about my hives. (BTW, the nerve conduction test is actually kinda cool. She held this tazer like thing to my arms and shocked me in a bunch of different places on my forearms to test nerve speed, and then stuck a wired-up .25 gauge needle in a bunch of different places and wiggled it around, looking for odd waveforms. Only the left thumb one was grimacingly painful - everything else was pretty chill.)
I'm going home tomorrow. Thank god for the corporate whore jet. I'm going to make sure some doc just sits down and listens to me. And gives me prednisone. And figures out why it feels like an elephant is sitting on my chest intermittently. That'll be a nice weight to get rid of. And then I can get to all the work that I've been unable to do this week, and the credit card that was compromised yesterday, and the 13% that WFMI lost that puts me in 3rd place...ugh! Maybe I'll keep the hives.