So I had a stress test a few days ago.
I figure what the hell, it’s been ten years since the heart attack and it’s probably time to get in there and do some mopping, maybe a bit of window washing, some bush trimming…whatever.
Honestly, it’s something that’s bugged me (read: worried me) for a while and lately, when I exercise, there’s been a bit more chest pressure than normal. The pressure’s always been there, like an annoying uncle who usually just quietly drinks his Thunderbird at family get-togethers.
Lately, though, crazy unc has been drinking more. It hasn’t progressed to the ‘Wow, Uncle Slobodon’s grabbing that woman’s ass again. He shouldn’t have his tongue in her ear, should he? Does he even know her name?” stage, but I can see it coming.
The pressure, when I’m exercising, has been there since the heart attack. Never pain, never anything scary, just a constant, gentle reminder than it’s probably not going to be a bad guy who kills me, or my wife, but rather the inexorable build of heart disease.
So I’m sitting with my Doc last week and I mention it, just to be on the safe side, and next thing I know, that son of a bitch has me hooked up to wheels and pulleys and bells and shit that you know – KNOW – is going to cost me the better part of half my annual salary.
I got a call from the hospital scheduler. In a surprisingly nasal, and pissy tone of voice, she says, “We schedule them on Wednesdays.”
“That’s going to be tough,” I said. “I work the night before and that night and it’s going to be tough.”
“Oh, well…in that case, let me explain something: we schedule them on Wednesdays.”
Ah, got it. As flexible as the highway between Midland and Odessa. Like Henry Ford famously said, any color you want as long as it’s black.
“You’ll need to be here at 7 a.m.”
“Yeah, but I don’t get off work until – ”
“You’ll need to be here at 7 a.m.”
There was a looooonng silence and in it, I heard – clearly – the threat of Nurse Ratched.
So of course I deferred to her. Because I always do exactly what the authority types tell me.
But then she hit me up for money. She demanded that I bring the entire co-pay…up front.
“Well, I’ll pay as much of it as I can.”
“You’ll need to have the entire co-pay.”
Now I’m getting pissed. What she’s saying, without speaking, is that if I don’t have the entire co-pay, I’ll not be allowed to take the stress test. In other words, the test is extremely important…unless I don’t have the money.
I mention that and it moves her not at all. She couldn’t possibly give a crap. She wanted her money and that was that, like a really militant street whore. ‘I get mine or you don’t get yours.’
I have no problem paying the entire co-pay, and eventually I will, but this is an expensive damned test. My part of the bill was something like $358,265.97 and she wanted it all right then. Part of me, the really sassy part, wanted to march straight up to her the morning of and, with great flourish and flamboyance, write her a check for a million dollars. A check that would, by the way, be just as worthless as one for $358,265.97.
The test itself wasn’t too bad. I got there early, got my IV full of thalium or thumpium or something…coulda been thermin or all I know…hehehe, a little musical joke. Then sat around for a half-hour while it coursed through my veins, no doubt radiating me like the water around Fukashima. Then the tech took 15 minutes worth of pictures to see what my baseline circulation was.
A nurse shaved me – which wasn’t anywhere near as fun as I’d hoped! – and attached all kinds of freakin’ cyborg bullshit to me, then they put me on the treadmill and let fly.
And we flew at exactly 1.7 miles an hour.
Dude, come on. My great-grandmother could walk faster than that and she’s been dead for a quarter-century.
Doc said he wanted my heart rate up to about 150.
“Doc? This 1.7 crap ain’t gonna get it.”
“Yes, yes, it will,” he said.
“I don’t think so, babe, I do 4 miles an hour on a 5% grade at home.”
“Don’t you worry, I’ve done this a few times before.”
I shut up and just kept walking. And walking. And walking. Slowly, the thing sped up, which I’d expected, and moved to a steeper grade, which I’d also expected. After seven or eight hours – or maybe just 12 minutes – the thing stopped.
But it stopped at 4.2 miles an hour and on a nearly 20% grade.
Holy balls, my legs are still screaming.
When I was done, they gave me a towel for all my Manly Sweat, and then put me in some sort of SUV-sized chair and rolled me back to waiting so I could get a second set of pictures.
Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like being rolled around a hospital by two older woman in a giant SUV-chair.
I kind of dug it. ‘Cause I’m a bad man.
Two days later Doc calls and says there are some abnormalities in the results but he’s not sure if that’s from the damage ten years ago or some new blockage.
So he casually mentions an angiogram.
He said it nicely, but it had the same undercurrent as, “We schedule them on Wednesdays.”
That, then, is the story of how I found myself talking to all manner of hospital registration people in preparation for Monday.
And what did she say to me? This scheduler woman at a hospital an hour south of here?
“You’ll need to be here at 6 a.m.”
“Yeah, but…I can’t – ”
“You’ll need to be here at 6 a.m.”
Any color you want, baby, as long as it’s black.
