[Thanks again, Light. It hit me that I have been feeling vaguely that I DESERVE bad news because I've been slothful and didn't do the right thing to maintain fitness. Glad I spotted it, will take it to my T.] Meanwhile, moved the following to a reply.
hugs
Hops
Amateur medical geek, I'll amuse myself by describing the chemical stress test:
First you get glued up with electrodes and have a fancy IV port stuck in the arm.
Then they take you to the cameras room, inject your IV with a radioactive isotope solution and you lie on the gurney while the cameras thingie -- it's a weird beige slab, not really a donut -- slowly rotates, swivels, rises and lowers and inches around your torso for 15 minutes, taking a boatload of images from many angles around the heart. These will be the "before stress" pictures/movies. Then you go sit in the waiting area while the glow-goo percolates through your circulatory system. You get really cold so they give you warm blankets.
Due to the very high number of electrical mitochondria in the heart, the largest amount of the glow-in-the-dark stuff will remain concentrated in the heart muscle a good while, while the rest slowly dissipates from the rest of the body and you read a good book. [There There by Tommy Orange...amazing. Shared it with a cool old guy in the waiting room and he was really happy to pull it up on Audible.]
After about 45 minutes, they take you to the stress room (just computers, a treadmill for doing it that way, and a gurney for the chemical version) and you get on the gurney for more waiting. What they're going to capture is blood flow, not direct images of artery innards or valves. Fifteen electrodes record blood flow volume in different areas of the heart in detail, so if there is an arterial obstruction, they'll spot the effect of it upstream or downstream, essentially. (If severe blockage showed, you'd be off for a cardiac catheterization soon. If less severe, maybe have one scheduled. If there's a big mystery, they might do a CCT -- cardiac computerized tomography scan. So if followup doesn't show a need for those, cool.)
Then the techs who wired you up in the stress room hover while a nurse explains risks blahblah and you sign permission to getastrokeorheartattackordiebutrarely). Nurse says "Here we go, workout in a tube!" and injects blue stuff (vasodilator) in the IV. The fancy EKGs run while it's going on. After about one second you are suddenly huffing and blowing and breathing harder than you ever have in your life, as though you're near the end of a marathon having never run a block since you were 10, and they cheer in-through-the-nose-out-through-the-mouth! and your heart goes really really fast and you huff so hard you think you're going to blow the N95 off your face and they all keep staring at you while over two or three minutes, it gradually subsides. I got one slight, familiar and brief chest pain during -- nothing strong at all. You can be left with a headache, some digestive upset or feel "weird all over". I had a little bit of all three but nothing remarkable. Then you do some more waiting room and hit the john and it's back to the not-a-donut room for another slow set of "after" images that will get glow-view of how the heart is looking post-stress. This time you have a set taken while on your stomach plus one again on your back. Then after another 45-60 minutes of waiting in your blankies they say bye-bye. Yay!
The warmth outdoors was awesome after the cold procedure rooms and I felt wonderful. Expecting good news Weds -- pretty optimistic I'm not in serious heart-trouble and there will eventually be a non-cardiac explanation for the chronic SOB/chest pain. They did seem interested in how hard I was huffing and blowing -- comme beluga. But maybe it's all JUST deconditioning and I'll be approved to begin a structured REconditioning program! That's the news I'm hoping for. Very glad this step in the inquiry is done, and super-grateful to the doc who listened. One of the nurses, a combat medic vet, told me the cardiol has an outstanding rep. He's muuy impressed by his breadth of knowledge. Given our med center, he likely has patients from all over the region. I like the research park, great design/layout of buildings, all set in woodsy green space with great parking.)
Pooches did pooch stuff, house is a wreck, I slept for four hours. Feel really good now though. Relieved and peaceful. Soon I hope I'll be miserably huffing up and down the street with maybe discomfort but without fear. Then the only obstacle will be discipline. I'll dig as deep as I can to find some. Cart before horse, until doc chat.
