Good health...

...is hard to come by.

Yesterday I had to head up to the Blessing cardiac unit and take a dobutamine stress test. Had some chest pains a couple weeks ago and they wanted to check me out.

Those who know me know I am a sizable fellow so I couldn't do the treadmill--I had to do the one where they inject you with a drug that makes your body respond as if you were exercising heavily, thus raising your heart rate and giving the docs a chance to see if there is anything wrong with the old ticker.

I call it the "lethal injection stress test". I hate 'em. This was my third and it was as bad as all the others.

It helped that the techs and nurses were all very sweet. The ultrasound woman was quite attractive, and reminded me of a girl I pined for way back in high school.  And Dr. Mannapaddi is a hoot and a half. But I digress.

Anyway they shave parts of my chest to attach the leads (ugh), insert the IV feed (double ugh), do the prelim baseline ultrasound (ouch), and then they shoot me up.

Did I mention that I hate this test?

It's ok for a while, almost like going up and down the stairs at the apartment four or five times. The heart starts to pound a bit is all.

They're tying to get your heart rate up to about 120, IIRC. That's fine, but at some point the whole experience goes from "oh this is like a nice brisk walk" to "Holy crap when did I sign up for the freaking marathon?!?!"

The heart is pounding like it's going to explode out of my chest (as seen in many hideously wonderful horror movies). My head is a bit light now. My stomach is dying for a chance to express itself but I wisely deprived it of anything to spew last night. My back is twitching since they lay you on your side. In fact, my right arm and shoulder are doing a bit of St. Vitus too. Great merciful Pumpkin this is too much!

Then to top it off, ultrasound starts digging holes in my chest and left side trying to get more pics of my heart before it goes kerblooey. Yeeeeowch! And the freaking gel they use is like 32 degrees (or colder)!

Longest 10 minutes of my life. Well, second longest. The last time they did this test on me they couldn't get my heart rate over 120. I think I was suspended at 100 or so for some interminable amount of time. But this one was bad enough.

Dr. M. informs me that my heart is damn near perfect. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. Of course he does point out that I need to effect some changes in lifestyle (eat less exercise more--but I'm not going to that place which the test simulates, sorry!) and drop about 150 pounds. That's nice to hear, actually, since a year ago it was 200 lbs I needed to drop.

Anyway, I'm apparently as healthy as a fat man can be expected to be. Better, in fact.

But they still don't know what caused the chest pains.

Well I'm tapped out now, and late for work to boot. So you'll have to finish this one up yourselves.

(insert witty closing bon mot here)