Sam Seaborn: I flat-out guarantee you that if men were biologically responsible for procreation, there'd be paid family leave in every Fortune 500.
Ainsley Hayes: Sam, if men were biologically responsible for procreation, they'd fall down and die at the first sonogram.
--The West Wing, "17 People" (4/4/01)
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I've been doing little updates throughout the day on Facebook, and it's launched a bunch of questions. So I'm going to try to answer some of them here, all wrapped up in this tale. (Except this one: Becky, I have no idea.) Settle in, kiddies.
This is the part where the screen gets all wavy as we move back in time.
About a year and a half ago, I was at the doctor's taking my usual drubbing for not having a better cholesterol number. Apparently it's supposed to have only three digits in it, who knew. Okay, it wasn't quite that bad but it was consistently high, and consistently hovering around the same high number no matter what I did with my diet. So she finally got me a prescription for something called Pravastatin. It's a baby dose and it's worked great so far.
However, during the same visit, she questioned me about other possible symptoms of problems, and I denied having any issues, except for one thing, which I was able to trace back to a specific event. At the time, my office was on the third floor of a building whose elevator was frequently out of order. In addition, I was a busy enough guy that I often ate lunch in the car, while in transit between one building and another. So there were numerous times that I would eat lunch on the way to the office and then, on a full stomach and toting my rather weighty backpack, I'd trudge up the three flights of stairs and be completely winded at the top.
My doctor is a rather cautious type. This works out kind of well when you're as anxiety-ridden as I am, and kind of not when you're as anxiety-ridden as I am. She suggested that I go to the Allergy & Asthma clinic over at GBMC. This was also the time the ball started rolling on my nose surgery. So I went to the clinic and they told me that, in addition to the allergies I knew about, I also have a mild case of asthma. They gave me Singulair and an inhaler, which I've used maybe five times. The Singulair I used until I ran out and then I bailed out on it. In November 2008 I got my nose fixed (ream out my sinuses and rebuild the septum). This past spring, in May, I said something again about the stairs, and she sent me for a stress test.
The May stress test I discussed in this post (click for linky goodness), so I won't rehash it here. However, a few weeks ago I found myself back in her office for my regular checkup, and the stairs thing came up again, with a minor difference: I found that I was still getting winded on stairs, even when I hadn't eaten and wasn't laden down with anything. Long walks? No problem. Shoveling snow last week? Keep it coming; I'm fine. Two flights of stairs? There better be an oxygen canister waiting for me at the top, 'cause I'm gonna need it.
Oh Yeah? Says the doc. Here you are; go take lots of tests: chest X-ray, Nuclear Stress Test, Echocardiogram. As it happens, the X-Ray place and the Stress Test/Echo doctor are in the same building as my doctor, however they're both out to lunch so I can't get anything done or scheduled right away. I call a few days later and get the tests scheduled for today.
So this morning I get the Nuclear Stress Test done (scroll down, lazy-ass), and afterwards I headed into the X-Ray guys, where I made the mistake of telling them that I had radioactivity cruising through my bloodstream. Oh, maybe you should wait, then, before taking some more radiation. Sigh.
Later in the day, I headed over to the Sinai Hospital campus for the Echocardiogram. It turns out that having had patches shaved off my chest already was NOT an advantage for this test; they weren't going to hook me up to anything. However, they were going to spooge some conductive gel on my body and press the wand into various spaces between my ribs. Obviously that's not me in the picture (I nicked it from the Franklin Institute), but it looked a lot like that, without the electrodes. Once in awhile she'd turn on the audio and I could hear the blood swishing through my heart. I couldn't really see the image while the probe was on my chest, because I was facing the wrong way (just like the photo).
Then she had me turn on my back and the probe got jammed into the space at the bottom center of my ribcage. Does anyone remember the Biology term "Xiphoid"? That's the stuff. The tech tried her best to snap mine off, but I'm a resilient guy. This time, I was able to see some of the pictures of my heart, especially when she told me to take a deep breath. Those times, it came into high relief. It was kind of cool and I really was a little disappointed that she didn't have the means to print me a hardcopy of the picture. I'd even settle for an audio file of the swishing blood.
So the tech's unofficial opinion was that everything appeared to be OK, and that I'd get something in about a week. So I guess my warranty's good for at least that long. In the meantime, once work resumes next week, I'm going to continue using the stairs, since it's the closest thing I get to exercise lately. I figure sooner or later I'll build my stamina back up.
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