Cardiolite Heart Stress Test Stresses Out Local Man

FRIGHTLANDER, Mich. - Yrag Nyac, longtime local resident, was a month or so into a new job when he began seriously questioning his choice of employment. Particularly since just being at work made his chest feel like an anvil was sitting on it. More fortunate than many, he had health insurance, and so lived to relate the following tale.

“Go for a cardiac stress test,” my family doctor told me. Yikes! I already had plenty of stress in my life, thank you very much. I certainly didn’t feel the need to go deliberately looking for additional stress. Then I remembered that my wife’s former boss had a heart attack while driving home from his cardiac stress test. Oops, more stress. Better to get checked out and find nothing, than not to and have an incident,” the doc said. An incident, right. What he meant was ‘HAVE A MASSIVE CORONARY, KEEL OVER, AND DIE A MOST PAINFUL DEATH.’ But my father had died of heart failure and I was now almost 50, so reluctantly I agreed to get tested.

At 8 a.m. on the appointed day, having obediently skipped the most important meal of the day, my Cheerios breakfast, I dutifully drove to the cardiac clinic in my comfortable, loose fitting clothes and shoes. After the usual paperwork and co-pay extraction, the nice receptionist led me to the back room.

There Nurse One applied a tourniquet to my right arm. Out came a wide bore needle and into the now bulging vein in my arm it went. Oh boy. I took a deep breath. Stay calm,” I told myself. She then attached a short loop of clear tubing and taped it securely in place. She immediately left the room, then quickly returned carrying a heavy-looking container covered with radioactive warning symbols. Radioactive! My mind raced to images of Chernobyl, of nuclear reactor meltdowns, of scientists in heavy suits with beeping Geiger counters, of mushroom clouds, of skeletons, of death. Would I glow in the dark? Set off detectors in airport security?

From the foreboding container, Nurse One pulled out a syringe filled with several milliliters of liquid and injected it through the tubing and into my arm. “This radioactive chemical makes it easier to take the pictures of your heart,” Nurse One told me. I expected to feel a sudden flush of spreading warmth as the radiation began to circulate, to see flashes of light as the radioactive atoms energetically decayed and released their insidious nuclear particles. In actuality, no warmth, no flashes of light, nothing.

After a 20 minute wait for the radioactive chemical to fully circulate through my body, Nurse One led me to another room containing a large, white, donut-shaped machine with a long, plain stretcher going through the middle. I was thinking…a stretcher, like they have in the MORGUE! Lie still, arms above your head. This will take the resting state pictures of your heart over the next 12 minutes,” she told me.

The machine pulled me on the stretcher through the hole of the mechanical donut, stopping with my chest right in the middle. One section of the donut rotated to just above my right side and a whirring noise began. By my internal cranial stopwatch, the movable donut section rotated a little toward my left side every 30 seconds. Very boring. Difficult to lie completely still that long. I counted 36 white ceiling tiles in the room, 6 panels of fluorescent lights, 4 air vents, and two audio speakers. They could have at least put a thin-screen TV up there.

That was easy. Not too much stress, except for contemplating the radioactive part…and the needle. I was then led to a small dressing area and asked to remove my shirt. With a disposable razor a different staff member, Nurse Two, proceeded to remove the manly hair growth from my chest and abdomen. Not all of it, just in the spots where the EKG electrodes were to be stuck on, giving me an attractive checkerboard look. She applied the electrode patches to the white hairless squares, then took me into a room with a big, fancy treadmill, two more nurses, and a computer with a large display. Why so many nurses, I wondered? Probably to catch me when I keel over, I concluded. More stress.

The nurses efficiently attached the EKG wires to the electrodes, the wires then going, like tentacles, to an octopus head central unit behind my back. A Velcro strap around my abdomen held the octopus in place, one tentacle plugging me into the computer. Nurse Three hung a saline IV bag beside the treadmill and attached its tubing to the loop going into my arm. Whoa! I was going to get dehydrated? Still more stress.

Nurse Two placed a blood pressure cuff around my left arm. First reading—160 over 90. Great. Before I’d even started the mental stress was making my blood pressure about to explode. No problem,” said Nurse Four while watching the EKG pulses dance across the screen. You’re just nervous.” No kidding.

In spite of having been fairly active throughout my life, I had never been on a treadmill before. My mental picture was one of people flying off the backs of treadmills and crashing into the wall as in TV ads. Having admitted my treadmill virginity, Nurse Four then explained, “We’ll start you off walking slowly, so you can get the hang of it. After 3 minutes we’ll increase the speed and make it incline, like walking up a hill. After 3 minutes at that stage we’ll increase the speed and incline for another 3 minute stage. We’ll keep adding more challenging stages until we reach your target heart rate. The more fit you are, the more stages it will take.”

Thinking of myself as reasonably fit, I figured I’d be there for a while. Was gonna be loads of fun, I knew. Like a student facing a painful final exam, I steeled myself to face the impending ordeal. Let’s do it,” I shakily said, ready to get it over with.

Nurse Four turned on the treadmill, initially slow and flat. Easy. I got the feel for it in a heartbeat. Like a leisurely walk in the park. On to stage 2. With the incline, it felt a little strenuous, but I handled it easily. By the end of this 3 minutes, my heart rate was up, but I didn’t feel pushed and was breathing comfortably. Nurse Two called out my blood pressure—it was down! That was a surprise. I began to feel more confident, that I would easily ace this test.

Then to stage 3. Oh-oh. The speed shot up to just short of a trot. I felt like one of those Olympic speed-walkers going up a steep hill, only I couldn’t slow or stop lest I get shot off the treadmill and splattered onto the wall behind me. My heart rate rocketed up and I quickly began to breathe heavily. I was really working hard just to keep up and not become a human projectile. The EKG pulses were racing across the screen.

Geez, this 3 minutes was crawling by. Toward the end, with my heart pounding nearly out of my chest, gasping for air, I thought that I was near my physical limit but began to wonder…what if there’s still one more stage to go? Total panic. I began to feel light-headed. Holy guacamole! I was going to pass out!

Then, suddenly, it stopped…the treadmill, not my heart, thankfully. Nurses Two and Three grabbed my arms and helped me sit down. Nurse Two checked my blood pressure again. I don’t even remember what she said because I was still so focused on not fainting. I expected that they’d immediately take me back to the donut machine for ‘stressed state’ pictures of my heart pounding away like mad. But they didn’t. Over the next few minutes I cooled down and the nurses unhooked the EKG octopus and IV bag. Then they injected more radioactive liquid into my arm and led me to sit another 20 minutes.

After another 12 minute, motionless, boring round in the donut hole for more heart pictures, that was it. I was told to go home. What? No heart pictures to look at? No results? Do I have a defective heart, or not? Our experts will study your pictures and EKG data, then send a report to your family doctor within 3 days, who will then give you the results. You did great. You’re free to go.”

I walked a little rubber-leggedly back to my car. Aaaaah, relief! Although I got a little light-headed toward the end there while on the treadmill, I had made it through OK. I had survived my first, and hopefully, last cardiac stress test. I guessed that if Nurse Four had seen something really abnormal on my EKG traces, she would have said or done something. I took her lack of alarm as good news, and was finally feeling pretty stress free. I got into my car and cranked it up to head for home.

Then I remembered my wife’s former boss.

05.15.09

(This article originally appeared in AssociatedContent.com)