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Suspected pericarditis

“But you’ve had chest pain for two days and haven’t gone to the emergency room?”
No.

Since the pain changed depending on the position, I thought it was muscular, and I’m not the type to be easily alarmed. More than anything else, I had been sleeping very poorly for two nights.
However, I had not considered that there could be another possibility: suspected pericarditis.
My doctor, therefore, sent me to the emergency room armed with these two little words.

At the Fatebenefratelli, they were fast, efficient and friendly: they turned me inside out (it’s nice to hear your own heartbeat during an ultrasound), and the cardiologist, a lovely man who joked in Bergamo dialect with the nurse (who was piercing both my arms) and made me laugh quite a bit, sent me home after a couple of hours with the strict order to rest for seven days.
It doesn’t look like pericarditis, but a trivial inflammation, perhaps the after-effects of past infections; in any case, if I didn’t improve, but I am already improving, I’d have to have an ultrasound scan again in a hurry.
The cardiologist explained the matter to me in detail, and apart from the fact that I should take it easy for a month, if I had pericarditis, it would be a nuisance but nothing serious.

The awful part of being there is seeing the bed beside where I spent three days of hell years ago.
Luckily, it was different this time, even though it affected me directly.

Yesterday I then had to go to the doctor again (although I called him, he was careful not to make a house call) for the certificate, then to the INPS and the post office to send it off. I am very thankful for the unnecessary bureaucracy, which made me lose a day of rest, and I thank heaven that it snowed just as I left.

As I wrote yesterday, I hope I have run out of jinxes in this first month of the year and that the next ones will be wonderful. Also, the hard part begins today: dealing with boredom, which I must avoid all activities that strain the heart.
Yes, that too.

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