Heart Update

I went Tuesday for the first round of tests on my heart. The first thing I did was lay on a platform that pulled me into a machine that took 640 sliced pictures of my heart. This was called a Calcium Score. This will detect any blockage that I may have in my heart. It took about 10 minutes and was pretty easy.

The second thing on Tuesday was the Nuclear stress test. I got hooked up to the EKG, had my blood pressure checked and then got to walk on the treadmill. The goal was to get my heartbeat up over 152 per minute. I was hooked up to an IV so once my rate got high I was injected with some dye. After this I was placed on another machine that took pictures of my heart for 15 minutes.

My first day took about 2 hours.

On Wednesday I had an echo cardiogram of my heart. Kind of like a sonogram. It was neat to see the little valves opening and closing on a regular basis. I joked that the lady didn't say something like, "OH MY!" She didn't find a baby either. This only took about 15 minutes and my next appointment wasn't for 2 1/2 hours. This technician hooked my up with my next step and saved me 3 hours.

I went for part 2 of the Nuclear Stress test. I was injected with some dye and sent off to eat a fatty meal. After reading a paper and having my Subway meal I got to lay on the machine that took 15 minutes to take images of my heart. I guess the dye shows up in some way.

All told it was pretty easy to do. I was finished on day 2 by noon. My toughest decision on the day was whether to go see a movie or come home and do housework. It was cheaper to just come home. Payday isn't until Monday.

Well, it is what it is. You can still pray for me, I appreciate it. I go on the 23rd to sit down with the doctor to see if anything is wrong.