Heart

I got to see my heart yesterday. It was awesome.

I've been having some weird pressure and tightness and occasionally pain in my chest for a couple of weeks, and after a couple of pretty bad episodes on Saturday and Monday I decided I needed to go to the doctor about it. I think it's probably stress-related, and so does my doctor, but still, you don't mess around with chest pain. And if it's stress, the anxiety caused by having chest pain is certainly not helping it go away.

So yesterday I went to the doctor. They did an EKG and a cardiac ultrasound and gave me a 24-hour heart monitor (which was uncomfortable; I'm glad to have it off!). The ultrasound was pretty much the coolest thing ever. I'm a huge medical dork, but I'm a pretty healthy one and I haven't had an x-ray or CT scan since I was a baby, so I've never actually seen the inside of my body. So it was pretty fascinating to be looking at basically a cross-section of my heart.

This is not my heart, but it is an image I found on the internet from an adult cardiac ultrasound and looks pretty similar to what I was seeing:

I could see my heart beating, the mitral valve opening and closing really clearly and the tricuspid valve not quite so well. Whenever I took a deep breath, I could see my lungs come in from the sides and obscure the view. So cool!

I won't hear back if there's anything wrong with my heart for about a week. Like I said, there probably isn't, but you don't want to risk it when you're having symptoms that might indicate a problem. Also, I am not looking forward to the medical bills for this. The deductible is so high on my insurance that I'm sure I'll be paying hundreds of dollars out of pocket. ::sigh::