***SPOILERS!*** I Have…Pleurisy ***END SPOILERS***

Yeah…what a fun day yesterday was. I drove my lil’ nipper (Travis for the uninitiated) out to Nordeast Minneapolis to spend the day with my folks. Traffic was horrible and it took FOREVER to get out there. But the worst was yet to come.

I hopped out of the truck and it was like someone through a spiky, lightning-charged spear into my chest. Seriously. I felt like I was having a ‘grabber’ right there on my parent’s driveway. All I could think about was:

I’m 36 stinking years old. I can’t be having a heart attack now!

I got my kid out of the car and seriously felt like I was going to collapse. I told my dad I was sort of having chest pains, because…you know, that’s what it felt like and he was all like “sit down” and I was all like “don’t tell me what to do, you’re not the boss of me anymore.”

Anyway, I realized I wasn’t dead after about 15 minutes and I blasted out of there, headed off to a fun-filled day at work.

The pain didn’t really subside, so I went to see the doctor. The dude checked me out up and down and left and right and even though he was a nice enough guy, he was sort of creepy. Like…mad scientist with a very soft-spoken voice creepy. He said my heart sounded fine and my lungs were clear. I told him I didn’t know how that was possible because it felt like I’d been peppered in the old bread-basket with buckshot. To make me feel better (?) he thought I should have an EKG and an X-ray done.

Well. Okay, then.

I went through all the stuff and went back to see the guy and we took a look at my EKG. He showed me how my heart was in great shape and actually made the EKG think I had bradycardia, which means my heart beats slowly. I know that sounds like a bad thing, but it’s actually an indicator, apparently, of how good of shape my heart is in due to exercise and stuff.

(Proper!)

Then he turned out the lights and I was worried he was going to try and hold my hand. (he didn’t) We looked at my X-ray and told me that my lungs looked tip-top (that’s what 0.0 cigarettes get you, kiddos) and that there was nothing wrong with the side of my heart or anything.

He turned to me and said: “Sounds like you’ve got pleurisy.”

“Of course,” I said. “Pleurisy. I thought it might be pleurisy. I just wanted to see if you guessed right.”

I nodded like I knew what he was talking about. I knew from EMT class that it had something to do with my lung’s lining, but didn’t know what. Anyway, it turns out the lining of my lungs and rib cage is inflamed, due to a virus or something. Everytime I take a deep breath, it hurts like you don’t even want to know.

Was told to take lots of ibuprofen and see how things go after a week or whatever.

Later that night, when my friend Dirty Abbott came over to play some zombie video game that I can’t seem to get enough of (Left 4 Dead) we decided to hit Chipotle with Travis. I went to pick him up and put him in the car and it was like Zeus himself said: “Oh no you don’t!”

I lifted the kid up five inches and I thought I was going to die. I eventually got him into the truck and we had a delicious meal of food.

So the moral of this story? Pleurisy sucks.