Folly or Feasible?

Friday was my nuclear stress test. Thursday night, I got a text message from my friend and co-worker Cordelia.

I’m at St. Joe’s. I was having chest pains. They’re keeping me overnight and doing a stress test in the morning.

Hmmmm, sounds familiar. Co-worker. Are we seeing a pattern?

First on the agenda Friday was an echocardiogram. Following that I went across the hall to radiology where Steve explained the procedure and inserted an IV port through which to inject the radioactive isotope. Not two minutes in the room I hear a voice from behind a curtain.

Is that you KBT?
Yes, Cordelia. Just had to one-up me, didn’t you? Overnight stay, hmph.

It took a bit of work convincing the technicians that yes, we really did know each other and no, our concurrent visits weren’t planned. But could we get a group discount? (No.)

We chatted until it was her turn to get on the treadmill and I was being taken to a machine where, it was explained, I would need to lie still and be quiet for 12 minutes.

“Good luck with that,” Cordelia informed them.
”Don’t let her keel over on that thing,” I responded. “She’s older than I am, you know.”

Pictures done, it was time for me to move to the treadmill. I’ve discovered that no matter how much they try to preserve your modesty, cardio work is right up there with mammograms for being hands-on. Finally, I was hooked up to all the necessary monitors, my baseline blood pressure was taken (98/67) and Joey —who may well have a future in the bra-fitting industry, if this technician thing doesn’t work out — told me that the target heart rate for the day was 156.

Pfffft. I know my heart-rate monitor isn’t reliable, but that’s not only doable, it’s easier than a lot of portions of a lot of my runs. Considering how little I’ve run lately (that would be “none”), it shouldn’t take all that long to hit that, now should it?

Joey started the treadmill at a perfectly reasonable pace … and at an insanely unreasonable incline. Okay, it could have been a .00000002% incline and I would hate it, but really, I have to go uphill? I hate hills. Doesn’t he read my blog?

I’m not a fan of hills. Why isn’t my heart-rate going up faster? How long do I have to do this? Are we done yet?

Why did that turn red? Yes, I’m doing fine. Yes, it’s fine if you turn it up.

You do know I don’t like hills, right? Why can’t I just go faster on the flat? And if you’re making me walk uphill, why does that picture on the wall in front of me show the road going downhill. You said pretend I’m walking along that road, but that road clearly goes downhill and I am walking uphill.

I’m starting to sweat and I’m really not a fan of that.

Yes, I know I’m a whiner. What’s your point?

If you don’t hurry up and finish taking my BP you’re going to miss the target and not get that injection done on time. Well, yes it does matter because then I’ll just have to be on here longer.

Okay, 156, how much longer? Are we done yet? I am getting graham crackers after this, right?

The fastest pace the treadmill adjusted to, right before I hit my target, was 4.2 mph, or about a 14:30 minute mile. Too fast to be walking comfortably but too slow, really to start running on the treadmill, all wired up as I was. Add to that the incline, and during that last minute I was holding on tight to the handrail to be sure I didn’t go off the back.

At one point Joey referred to the fact that Juliette, the PA from the cardio group, was supervising my testing. Because she was at the counter going over something on the computer screen with her back to me for duration of the test, I joked that Juliette was over there playing solitaire, not supervising.

“If you’d quit talking I’d have turned around, but I was pretty sure you hadn’t collapsed.”

Fair enough.

Finally I got to get out of the gown and put on my own clothes. I did get my promised graham crackers, and about 15 minutes later went back to the be-quiet machine for my last round of pictures.

I don’t think the 9+ minutes I spent walking even burned off the calories from those graham crackers, but by golly I recorded it in my exercise log.

Cordelia had been taken back to her room while I was on the treadmill, so I stopped up to see her on my way out. She was stuck there until the results came back; I, at least, got to go home and hang out on my own couch, enjoying my first caffeine of the day.

Apparently, being in-house gets you your results faster; I knew how her tests had gone at least two hours before they called with my update. The echo hadn’t been read, but everything looked just fine, dandy, and normal on the stress test photos and data.

So anyone who had congestive heart failure in the “What’s KBT’s Problem (Health-wise, That Is) Pool” is now out.