Word of the Day: incontrovertible So I woke up this morning to a tightness and burning in my lower chest. It was hard for me to breathe. This has happened once before, namely Thursday night, and it went away. I attributed this first incident to stress since we made a trip to Louisiana for a funeral and back in two days. It happened again this morning, and then went away, and then came back, and then went away, came back, went away, came back, and finally went away. It happened twice here at home before I decided to go to the hospital [after much gentle chiding from JD], once as we were getting ready and walking to the car, and once more as we got to the hospital. It seemed to get worse and worse each time the tightness began, the last two times I could barely breathe through the worst of it, and I threw up from the pain the last time at the hospital, right before we walked into the emergency room. I explained to lots of people what was going on, and so the doctor ordered chest x-rays and bloodwork done to check for inflamed or collapsed lungs or blood clots anywhere. After about an hour and a half or so, he came back and let me know that the x-rays and bloodwork were all normal and he didn't know what was going on. He told me to take Motrin for the rest of the day [which I'm not doing because I'm lame] and to go back if it happens again and is really really bad. When it happened Thursday night, I thought I was having a heart attack. It went away and I didn't think of it again until this morning, when I thought I was dying. I really thought I was dying. That's partly why I decided to go to the hospital [and also partly because I didn't know when it was going to stop and it hurt like a moe]. I thought, for a fleeting moment, that I was having a heart attack on Thursday night. I knew I wasn't, but the thought crossed my mind. This morning I thought that somehow I had asthma and it all of a sudden reared its head and that my windpipe was just going to close and I was going to die. I even got myself far enough to think that I didn't have a will and what was going to happen to JD and Patrick if I did die. But then I thought, 'Ashley, you idiot, you have to calm down, or else you really might die.' And so I consciously made myself not think about me dying and was able to breathe as well as I could. I have death on the mind. Apparently. If I make it to this evening, we're watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, watching Uncle Dave Disney-fy a cancer ward in an Arizona hospital. I'm just proud that I remembered about it.