stress test finally done!

well i finally had the test done today. and let me just say that i dont want to have to do it again for a very long time!

i got to the hospital at 7am and filled out the paperwork,hooked up to the IV,etc. by 8am i was in the "stress lab" with all the cords attached between me and the EKG machine. the anesthesiologst type guy told me that i would be given some medicne that would make me feel yucky. during the peak stress time i will be injected with the radiation so they can take the picture later.side effects of the medicine usually are nausia, chest tightness, shortness of breath, hot flash/sweaty. he said the good news is the medicine is only in my system for 4 minutes,then they reverse it and within 30 seconds i'm back to normal. he said some people dont even feel anything at all. i asked so its just like you were exercising,right? and they said yes.

NO! WRONG!! all i have to say is that i've never felt the way i felt whenever i've exercised. i'm lying there on the table with the technicians around, as well as my cardiologist to make sure everything is going ok, chatting it up when BAM-all of a sudden, out of the blue, i felt like i was suffocating. my chest was extremely tight, i was panting, sure enough my stomach was quesy-these things like they said they would be. but what bothered me the most was my arms and legs started spasing then they felt really heavy, then went totally numb. at this point my doctor said i was more than halfway into it with just a litte more to go. i started freaking out, and started crying a little. i felt like i was gonna pass out except i was trapped and besides my legs and arms were still feeling funny. finally it was all over, and true to their word, i felt "normal" within a very short time. the technicians asked me "wasnt that better than running a mile on a treadmill?" and i emphatically said "NO!" i explained to them what freaked me out most about my arms/legs and thats why i was crying. not that it hurt. the technician said that i was the second person to have that side effect, that its not a very common one. well,thats just me i guess!

once that was all done i was taken to another room where they took the images. i laid on a table for 17 minutes while a machine spun around me-like an MRI machine-to take pictures of when my heart was in peak stress. then i was injected with another round of radiation and 17 minutes later images were taken of my resting heart. what i found most interesting about that portion was that before they did any of the imagining i had to drink some milk! they said that helps to clarify the images, since the liver and heart are so close together. by drinking the whole milk it makes the liver start processing (because of the fat) and they can then distinguish between the two organs better. the guy said one time he had a patient whose organs were dificult to distingush, so he told her to go eat a cheeseburger and come back. sure enough it was clearer then. pretty cool!

now i'm just waiting for the results. all i know is i never want to go through this again. it ranks right up there with some of the more horrible dental visits i've had. sure medical stuff is neat when you are studing about it, but not so much sometimes when you are experiencing it! ;)

UPDATE: good news--the results came back fine from the stress test :)
doctor said that the defect they were concerned about may have just been a shadow of breast tissue, as can sometimes happen in women. shes not worried about the extra beats either.
her main concern now is just to keep the blood pressure medication regiment going so that the BP is under controll. i am cool with that! as long as i dont have to do that awful stress test again i'll do anything!

thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers during this drawn out journey, it means alot!