LittleWyvern.com

Stress Test

I had thought my stress test might be a bit painful or even dangerous. In the days leading up to the appointment the test itself was certainly intimidating. Facing the unknown can be pretty scary, but in the end the experience proved to mostly just be embarrassing.

Walking into the doctor’s office everything was business as usual. I filled out a few forms - I had to sign a piece of paper acknowledging my understanding that the test itself may literally cause a heart attack… which didn’t do too much for my anxiety level. I took a seat in the waiting room, quietly noticing that I was identical to the other dozen soon-to-be patients save for the fact that my outfit was typical of a trip to the gym rather than… well, just about anywhere else.

A technician soon arrived and led me to a back room that featured the expected paper-sheeted chair/table/bed/bench typical of every doctor’s office in America. Next to the bed, though, stood a simple treadmill which was connected by electrical wires to an elaborate computer setup. The technician had me lay down on the bed for about ten minutes while he explained what was about to happen. He didn’t actually mention it, but it was immediately obvious to me that the larger unspoken purpose to this phase was to drop my heart rate as low as possible before the test began. I casually listened to the man while focusing the rest of my concentration on a controlled sequence of breathing in an effort to will my pulse into the slow lane. So far so good.

Despite all efforts to keep my heart rate in control, once the technician began shaving my chest I couldn’t help but get a little bit nervous.

“It’s ok,” the man said. “I am only shaving a few places so that we can connect the electrodes.”

What exactly about ‘connecting the electrodes’ is supposed to be ‘ok?’ As the plastic connection strips were applied across my chest and stomach I once again tried to will myself back to rest. Each node was then connected to a different wire, each wire leading back to a single, plate-like device which was then strapped across my ribs. I was left feeling like some kind of mobile, battery-powered robot. The technician asked if I was ready. I didn’t know what exactly I was supposed to be ready for. The computer screen jumped to life as a series of previous horizontal lines jumped to life in the familiar patterns of a human heart beat. It took only a second or two before the technician reacted.

“Oh, boy. Alright…” The doctor watched the lines and patterns fluctuate for another few moments. I had only a general understanding of what I was looking at: enough to know that my heart was beating, but not enough to know if there was a problem. I watched the various patterns (each presumably measuring a different aspect of the same thing) with curiosity. There is something fun about watching a computer monitor and realizing that it is the very thing which keeps you alive that also makes the lines dance. My levity dropped slightly, however, as my eyes wandered to a different part of the screen where a few small letters managed to capture my full attention.

ABNORMAL.

Oh well, I guess we already knew that, huh? I mean, that’s why I was there.

I mentioned that the test was embarrassing, right? Well, the treadmill stress test is designed with the sole purpose of stressing your heart. The goal is to reach 85 percent of your maximum heart rate, and the test does not stop until you get there. I say that the test was embarrassing because I “got there” in less than nine minutes. The test is organized in a series of 3-minute levels. You begin by walking on a treadmill at a natural pace, and every three minutes the treadmill increases its speed and its elevation. Between levels the technician checks your blood pressure and asks you a series of simple questions (”do you feel any chest pain?” for example). The electrodes attached to my torso recorded my heart rate allowing me to watch my ever-increasing heart rate in real time on the computer’s monitor. The test allows for nine stages, but that proved unnecessary because in just over eight minutes, only part-way through level three, my pulse had hit 190 and the test was over.

It was embarrassing to tire so quickly, but in my defense I had a few things working against me.

1. I have a monkey’s heart. At least that’s the current theory. Obviously my heart is not at 100% or I wouldn’t even be on the treadmill in the first place. I have mentioned this before - my pulse skyrockets very quickly as of late for reasons that have to extend beyond merely a few too many orders of orange chicken at Panda.

2. Walking very, very fast is a lot more tiring than jogging. Speed walking is tiring. Speed walking up a steep hill is exhausting.

3. I had a large heart monitor strapped across my chest. The straps needed to be tight enough to keep the device from slipping off as I exercised. Unfortunately that meant that they were also tight enough to make deep breathing impossible.

It wasn’t until the test was over and the technician began removing the electrodes that I realized how sweaty I had become. My chest was pounding and my calves were sore from the treadmill’s incline. I worked to calm down as the technician explained his immediate findings. The actual test results would take two weeks to be processed, but the man’s impression was that I should be scheduled for an echocardiogram. Something strange was definitely going on, but it didn’t look too serious (I assume ’serious’ carries a different meaning to people like him, but at the very least I hadn’t had a heart attack… which was good). He left to speak with my doctor, but returned within a few minutes and explained that my doctor didn’t see any reason for an echo. This fell in line with my previous experience with the doctor when he told me that I could wait a few weeks for the stress test because I was “young and strong.”

My followup with the doctor is scheduled for next week, by which time we should have the stress test results as well as two new blood test reports. With any luck I will be able to find out exactly what, if anything, is going on inside my chest.

My chest pain continues sporadically. In the past week I have had a few days pass by entirely without incident. I started to actually think that I might be fine (cured as it were, if it had only been anxiety), but then on Saturday night a group of friends and I ended up at a club down on the strip. I was dancing with a girl when a sharp pain suddenly shot through the right side of my chest and my breathing became difficult. I keeled over in the middle of the dance floor, hands on my knees with my head down. I struggled to work through the pain for a few moments before I realized how weird I must look to the rest of the drunk/ecstasy-riddled nightclub folk, let alone the girl I had been dancing with. I righted myself and quickly made my way back to the fringes of the room where I could lean against a wall without attracting attention. The shoulder pain eventually lessened, but the rest of the night was still spent in mild agony. So much for being cured.

At this point I have no idea what is going on. Some signs point to anxiety. Some signs point to… something else. The technician at the stress test initially guessed that it might be something called Left Ventricular Hypertrophy which he explained was a thickening of the muscle on the left side of my heart. The tech says that it is typically the result of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, being overweight, or smoking. None of which apply to me.

Does that mean anything special to any of the doctors-to-be who read my blog?