So I had to go to the emergency room recently for chest pains and irregular heartbeat. I was, to put it mildly, less than impressed with the care I received.

For example, it took them two hours to get a simple thyroid test in, during which time they left the automatic blood pressure cuff on an intolerable setting. I have bruises on my arm where it was because it squeezed me too hard. They also sent me home, and then called me back at two o' clock in the morning demanding that I come back immediately so that they could do an EKG. For those of you who don't know, and EKG is essentially used to monitor one's heart. I believe the exact words that they used were that they wanted to come back to do an EKG to cover their butts. Finally, I and the two people with me (my husband and one of my friends) both watched multiple times as my heart monitor recorded huge irregularities in my heartbeat. Like, instead of regularly-spaced little spikes, my heartbeat would become a hill of tons of tiny waves. I can't really describe it, but it was majorly uncomfortable and caused me a great amount of stress. And yet the doctors insisted that everything is perfectly normal, except for a slight potassium deficiency. They said I should increase my fluid intake (sort of hard to do when one of your symptoms is that swallowing large amounts of fluids causes one's heart to skip a beat ) and get plenty of bed rest for a few days before following up with a cardiologist.

I'm tired, I'm cranky, my chest hurts, I can't hardly breathe, I'm worried, and I'm angry that they think they can make an accurate diagnosis when they didn't even realize until I'd left the emergency room that they didn't do an EKG. I'm going to follow up with a REAL cardiologist soon, because there is no way in hell that I'm trusting them with my health.