A Visit to Urgent Care

Yesterday started off rather uneventful. I had agreed to take Trina to the Welfare Office so she could get an issue with Amber's MediCal fixed. We were there about an hour, stopped on the way back to get Jack In The Box tacos and came home and watched The Daily Show. About an hour before I am planning on going to my Dad's to do some homework that I had slacked on (I had too much fun stuff to do on Sunday) my left arm starts to hurt.
At first, it felt like when you get a flu shot in your bicep, like it hurt and it bugged but not enough to really pay attention to. As the hour passes, it starts to hurt worse. Eventually, it is quite uncomfortable. I put my hand over my arm and I can feel something in my arm pulse back at me, like a heartbeat, only irregular. The throbbing makes the pain feel like a shooting pain. It now feels like there is something actually INSIDE my arm, and its stuck, and it hurts. I have Trina put her hand over my arm and she feels the weirdness too. She suggests I go to the doctor. I decide to call the 24 hour nurses hotline on my Kaiser card.
They ask a lot of questions. Do I have shortness of breath? (No.) Can you stand up? (Hold on a second...yeah I can.) Do you have swelling? (Hold on...Trina, does this arm look bigger than the other?...Yeah, a little) Is your hand colder than the other one? (Hold on...Trina hold my hands and tell me if this one is colder...Not really.) Are you on any medication? (Yaz Birth Control)
Then I remember something my Gynocerous said Friday, that she wanted to take me off Yaz because of the risk of blood clots. Holy crap, do I have a blood clot?
The nurse determines that I'm not having a heart attack (um DUH) but says I still need to go see a doctor. They can't get me a same day appointment but they will put a note in my file and they tell me to go to Urgent Care.
Trina has an appointment to get to for the kids, so I go to my Dad's and ask him to take me to Urgent Care. I'm still not sure I even want to go, and I hate asking my Dad to go with me, but I'm too big of a baby to go by myself. On the way to my Dad's I call Sherry, since she's a nurse and one of my best friends. I run down my symptoms to her and she says "Um, yeah dude, go see a doctor. If its a clot and it becomes dislodged and goes to your brain, you'll become a veggie."
At this point, the pain has also started to show up in the inside of my elbow, the outside of my wrist and the top of my knuckles. I can't move my arm now at all without some kind of pain. I have no idea what is wrong with me and it is starting to freak me out a little, not to mention the pain is getting worse.
The doctor asks me if I have done anything strenuous or repetitive with my arm lately. I tell him that I haven't worked out in over a week, save for an hour on the treadmill last week and some housework, because I've been having issues with digestion and my ulcer. He moves my arm around, which hurts like hell, and then has me breathe while he moves the stethoscope all over my chest, back and stomach, listening for whatever.
He asks me what I do and I tell him I'm a student. He asks about my field of study and my units and I tell him I'm a Pre-Law major taking 15 units. He asks if I have been under a lot of stress lately and I have to say yes. He asks about what and I lie and say school. I was too embarrassed to say the real reason. I'm taking more than a full load of a difficult field of study, so school could be a plausible answer.
"You have tendinitis," he says.
"How the hell did I get tendinitis?"
"Stress. Stress can cause it," he says.
"What?"
Now, I know that stress can do all sorts of weird crap to you. It can make it so everything you eat comes shooting violently and only partially digested out of one of your orifices for days at a time, it can give you an ulcer and make you have blood in your bile secretions, it can give you gray hair, acne, bags under your eyes, cause insomnia, migraines, panic attacks, even my Gramma got shingles from stress once, but tendinitis? Really?
The doctor, even though it hurts, wants me to use this arm to do basic stuff, but nothing too heavy or strenuous. I'm not even allowed to carry my purse on that arm, and my purse isn't even that big (Leigh's purse is WAY bigger.) Even typing kinda hurts. The truth is, everything hurts, but he says if I don't use my arm at all, it will get stiff and swollen. (Insert dirty joke here) Getting dressed, washing my hair, even putting it up in a hair clip, all hurt me today. The doctor gave me Flexerol (a muscle relaxer) to take at night since it makes you loopy and some anti-inflammatories for day time. I only take about a third of the daytime stuff because it irritates my stomach, and right now I don't need anything else to irritate it. I also have some of my Dad's Lidocane patches. I had 2 on my arm last night. I looked like a burn victim LOL
I'm glad it wasn't a clot or something serious, but it kinda sucks that now I have something that will never really go away (I'll have flares for the rest of my life), and I got it from something I didn't expect. I know stress can kill you, but I didn't think it could cause you physical pain like this. You learn something new every day.