I spent four days in the hospital this past week. I was having chest pain and my cardiologist said I needed to go to the emergency room and be checked out. I told him I have lots of homework to do so he said instead of going to Barnes I could go to St. Elizabeths and get checked out there. I went to St. Elizabeths and they would not release me to go see my cardiologist on my own or drive myself to Barnes. My ekg showed I was not having a heart attack. I have a dialted assending thoracic aorta. They are afraid of dissection which can occur. If it does I don't have long to get to the hospital. When I was first told about it, I cried because the surgery to correct the problem is very risky so they don't perform the operation until it reaches a certain size. Because it is so close to my heart valve, it is more risky. Dissection is when the inside layer of your aorta tears and leaks into the outer layers. You can bleed to death very quickly. So anyway they send me to Barnes by ambulance. I felt really stupid because I wasn't sick and they really only needed to do an MRA on me. MRA is the same thing as an MRI just specialized for the aorta. I understand why they were taking precautions. They kept me in the hospital for four days and I got a really good understanding of just how bad nurses have gotten. I had maybe two good nurses the whole time I was in there. The rest could kill someone who didn't feel well enough to speak for themselves. I was in a room with an older woman who had a heart attach and she was also a diabetic. They took their time getting her a shot when her blood sugar shot up because they brought her the wrong food. I finally threatened to leave under my own authorization if they didn't let me out because I had two evening classes on Monday and I cannot affort to get behind with 9 classes. So they called my cardiologist and they did some more tests and let me go. The silver lining to all of this is that I got some badly needed rest and was able to take care of the lady in the room with me. There is always something good to be thankful for.