Hurray for not being dead.

Hello, world.
So I had pretty much the scariest weekend of my life.
Saturday night, after Kelli had gone home, I was getting ready for bed and started to feel weird. Like, I had some pressure around my tummy, and throughout my ribs. I tried all sorts of positions to get comfortable, kind of thinking I just had an air bubble trapped in there, but it wouldn't work. I accidentally dozed off for half an hour (with my arms in funny positions and an irritated doggie half on my pillow, half on my head- I guess that's the only place he felt safe from my flailing) and woke up at around 1130 in tremendous pain. I decided to move to the living room to try to sleep in the chair, and the pain was getting exponentially worse by the second. Seriously. I called mom on her cell phone and said something was wrong, and within what felt like minutes, I was in the bathroom kneeling on the floor, my ribcage feeling like it was splitting apart, heart pounding, etc. It was not a panic attack- that is a beast I know all too well. I had trouble breathing- I had to pour like, all my concentration into forcing myself to inhale. Exhaling was fine, but inhaling took tremendous effort. I honestly thought I was dying. Not breathing well was making my vision go a little funny at moments, was making it hard to concentrate on what I was saying, and was just scary. I was able to take one of my anxiety pills (for emergencies only) because really, it couldn't harm anything at this point. It could really only help me remain calm during this scary time, and I was starting to feel like I was losing control. As a person who has a permanently broken rib (from my spinal surgery), I always expect some discomfort when I've been coughing a lot- and I have been over the past two weeks or so (I've had a cold). But this was way higher than that broken rib I have, and wrapped all around my chest, my back, and under my arms, and it was excruciating. Unlike anything I have ever experienced. I honestly thought I was getting ready to or already experiencing a heart attack or something like it. I thought I was going to die. After a little while it subsided for a few minutes (after we'd already decided I needed to go to the hospital) and then started up again. So we headed off to the emergency room, my heart beating super fast, and me still scared, but not in quite as much pain as before. We waited for what felt like a long time, and got called back. I had a heart monitor and everything, and then got left alone for a while. Then the nurse came back and tested me for H1N1, just in case, and left again, and then I had a chest x-ray, and another break, and then an EKG just in case. Mom thought it was more likely that I had pneumonia than a heart condition, which is a good thing, but then again, I've had pneumonia before and it has never hurt like that, or as suddenly as that. The heart monitor showed that my heart was beating a little fast (I had calmed down more at this point) but my blood oxygen levels were good, and I hadn't had a cardiac episode. The ER doctor said I probably have pleurisy, which I thought people had in the 1800's, but I must be confusing that with something else. Anyway, we got home a little before 5 a.m. Sunday morning, and I slept most of the day. I still get kind of scared sometimes, because like I said, that was the scariest thing I have ever experienced. I appreciate knowing that if my heart really was going to, I don't know, give out, there probably would have been a sign of it in those tests they ran. But after that terrifying nightmare, even the little heaviness I have in my chest right now makes me a little upset. I don't want anything bad to happen in the middle of the night. It was scary thinking I might die and knowing that Brandon's phone was turned off, and I couldn't talk to him (not that I could really talk to him anyway, but once I'd gotten to feeling a little better it would have been nice to know that he was aware of what was going on.
Anyway, that was my weekend. My chest hurts a little right now but I'll be ok. I'm tired of coughing and just want to feel better, really. Feeling bad makes me sad. Thinking about what happened this weekend makes me sad. So maybe I will stop talking about it now. I will save my stories of wedding planning for another time.