I'd like to pretend that I checked into UCLA's new hospital Friday on an undercover mission, to check out patient care at the $800-million medical showpiece.
But the truth is, I spent much of my weekend there, hooked up to monitors and IVs, because I thought I was having a heart attack.
For two days, I had tried to ignore the tightness in my chest, dizziness and unrelenting fatigue. But when I had to stop and lean against a tree to catch my breath on a short walk across the UCLA campus, I realized that something serious might be wrong.
Yet I got in my car and started toward downtown, trying to brush off the feelings. I had a column to write, a deadline to meet. I could always stop at the hospital on my way home from work if I still felt bad. Then I imagined my three daughters motherless -- lost, hurt and angry at my stupidity. I whipped a U-turn on Westwood Boulevard and headed back to the Ronald Reagan Medical Center.
The hospital -- eight years in the planning and open for two weeks -- has been hailed for its beauty, creature comforts and new-age technology. "A masterful piece of light, nature and scale," The Times' former architecture critic put it; a place where architecture can help heal "the human psyche."
My psyche didn't appreciate the expansive views or Italian travertine. I wanted better directions and bigger signs as I wandered, clutching my chest, through its halls and lobbies.
Once I found the emergency room, it took minutes for the triage team to settle me on a gurney and hook me up to an electrocardiogram machine. The squiggly lines on the monitor looked fine to me. I breathed a sigh of relief and mentally prepared to leave.
What I didn't know is that "chest pain" not only whisks you to the head of the emergency room line, but sets in motion a series of blood tests, X-rays and monitoring that can make an overnight stay a necessity.
Chest pains can mean many things, Johanna Bruner, the hospital's head of emergency room and cardiology services, told me Monday. The effectiveness of treatment depends on the quality of the diagnosis.
Describe your symptoms. Rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10. Do you smoke, drink? What medications are you taking? Did anyone in your family have heart disease?
I got the same set of questions four times in three hours, from young doctors-in-training who reminded me of my overachieving oldest daughter -- earnest, conscientious, determined not to make an error. This is a teaching hospital, after all. These young women were learning, and I was their assignment.
