Well that was an adventure ! Went in for my stress test and my two CT scans for my ascending and abdominal aorta yesterday.
Talk about a train wreck. Stress test on the treadmill went ok. It was over with before I got to the point I wished it was over with. Breathing semi- hard but not enough to stop me from having a conversation with the nurse conducting the test.
She kept fiddling with the electrodes during the test. I suppose that’s what they’re called. The little patches they put on you and hook wires to for the EKG. After it was over she said “I don’t know, I hope it’s good enough for your doctor to review”
Scanned me for a second time and sent me to the waiting room for the imaging of my aortas. Waited an hour and a half watching people who came into the waiting room and after a few minutes being taken into imaging rooms across the hall. So I finally go to the window and ask why they keep taking people before me. The girl at the window asked me what my name was and I wasn’t on the list. Told her I had an 11:00 a.m. appointment and the gal at the desk where they did the stress test took my paperwork and came back and told me I was registered. She went over there and did that because they didn’t know if I would be on time for the 11:00 a.m. appointment.
So the gal at the radiology window got on the computer and said “sir you have to register before we do these tests”. I told her that I registered at 7:40 a.m. and told the person that registered me I was here for a stress test and also two imaging tests. Anyhow she told me to take a seat and she would take care of it before she did anything else. About 20 minutes later I was finally called to go back for the tests.
Wait, it gets better. The gal that brought me back took me to a waiting area to discuss what the procedure was and started to ask me a few questions. One of them was “when did you have your abdominal aorta repair ?” I told her I’ve never had an abdominal aorta repair but a few years ago they did an ultrasound of it and didn’t find anything wrong. I told her the only thing in my body that I wasn’t born with was mesh from an umbilical hernia repair about 20 years ago.
I’m already fairly irritated at this point and she asked “are you sure you don’t have a stent in your abdomen?” I replied " that requires surgery I didn’t have but if it’ll help me get the hell out of here mark me down as having one !" I also
explained to her the screw up with registration and the nearly 2 hours I waited for her to call me back. I did tell her it wasn’t her fault. She apologized for having me wait and said she would have to call the cardiologist and see what’s going on.
She came back in to the room I was in and said my cardiologist didn’t explain but her guess was she mistaken my hernia repair for aortic surgery lol
Then I proceed to pull my sleeve up on my right arm and showed her the IV they left in my arm at the stress test. They had told me that I’ll need it at imaging. The gal looks at me and said " I don’t know why they did that. That’s the wrong size for our needs. " Being the joker I am I said “strike three I’m out of here”. The look on her face was priceless lol. I’ve then told her it was no big deal.
She smiles and tells me to hang on a minute and comes back in and says she checked and the one in my arm was within specs of the juice they was going to stick in me.
So I get on the table and she tells me over the speaker from her safe little booth to protect her from the radiation they were pounding me with, “it’s going to get real hot very quick…just relax it won’t last long” She was talking about the contrast solution. I did feel it but it wasn’t nearly as bad as she described it and it only lasted 4 or 5 minutes.
So right as they were letting me leave she told me to keep an eye on myself. Some people have a reaction to the contrast juice. She said the overwhelming majority of the time if someone has a reaction it’s immediate. But I’m not in the clear for 48 hours. I think I’ll be all right on that.
So I finally get home 3 hours later than I should have. I kept telling myself to forget about it. Somebody just made a mistake.
But it wasn’t over yet. I fell asleep on the bed last night reading and when I woke up I pulled my shirt off to get in the shower. Looked in the mirror to make sure I didn’t have a rash that I was told to look for in case I had a reaction. No rash but I found these…
The nurse doing the stress test didn’t remove all of them lol
Results not posted yet but seeing as though I had no discomfort on the treadmill part, I’m feeling pretty good about it all. I did ask her a few questions so I could go home and do an armchair diagnosis. The part that raised my eyebrows is my systolic blood pressure got up to 180. From what I read looking into it, it turns out it’s not an issue.
We’ll see.
That ice cream is keto of course 