BOWHUNTING ON A TREADMILL

How To Survive A Nuclear Stress Test

 

By B. Elwin Sherman

 

 

 

 

          Take my heart, please.

          I had my Nuclear Stress Test yesterday, and I’m happy to report that the results matched, even exceeded, my expectations:  I miraculously found a place to park at the hospital right up front, I didn’t die, and I’m not dead yet.

          A Nuclear Stress Test translates the literal meanings of its three words into a series of maneuvers, posturings and applications designed to produce a cardiac profile of the recipient.  This, in turn, provides the statisticians with a diagnosis of the patient’s prognosis.

          Thus, the NST findings can help determine a patient’s pre-disposition to heart attack, measure the nature of his heart anomalies, assess the causes of his chest pain, and help the ordering physician decide whether or not to augment his malpractice insurance.

          My NST began simply enough, with my car conveniently stationed, but the ambulatory dividend I’d earned from the proximal parking was negated when I mistakenly entered and had to traverse the 1000-ft zig-zag wheelchair ramp because I’d missed the three-step entryway.  Admit it, you’ve done it, and the question is: do YOU hop over the rail?  Ill-advised, because you risk embarrassment, it angers the approaching wheelchair confinees, especially if you upend one, and may well necessitate your future visits via this venue if you have a mis-hop.

          Once inside the lobby, I precisely followed the building’s hallway legend and soon found myself in the boiler room, lost and receiving a bemused stoker’s charitable redirections to the Nuclear Medicine’s reception desk via the hospital’s Central Supply corridor, which I followed directly to the Maternity Unit.

          Three color-coded maneuvers and a service elevator later, I was finally pre-seated in the Nuclear Medicine post-reception cubicle, where I occupied myself by avoiding a gruff-bellied fellow testee fully immersed in reading his copy of The Bowhunter’s Bible.  He looked up long enough to say: “You didn’t bring anything to read?  Dumb.”   Sensing that taking any position with this sporting figure, contrary or not, might result in a loosing of arrowheads, I turned to completing my paperwork.

          He was, after all, also there to have his stress tested, and it would be easy enough for a disgruntled archer to pack a quiver under a hospital gown.

          About half an hour later into what felt like the next day, I was retrieved by the NST techie who performed the following:

          He inserted an intravenous port into my dominant arm, shaved my chest hair, pasted cold electrodes onto my patchy torso, and tucked me into a rotating enclave via a sliding convex or concave table (no, I don’t remember which is which, and neither do you).  I spent the next 25 minutes listening to him answer questions I didn’t ask, and didn’t want the answers to.

          Due to the dizzying nature of this process, everything he said to me sounded like: “We need to amplify the infarcting isotope occluding the tuba swing band.”  This must’ve been because he believed I hadn’t come pre-equipped with enough stress, and wanted to insure that the finest in techno-med machinery was not wasted on an impostor.

          On to the treadmill, where I was attended by a triune of lab-coated proctors, who monitored my STRESS with the TEST (we’re almost to the NUCLEAR part).  The test provided the motive one needs to credibly beg for death, and the means of accommodating this plea.

          As the treadmill increased in speed & elevation, my heart rate trebled, I stopped responding to any questions put to me due to the insufficient air needed to activate my vocal cords, my legs turned to putty, and doing anything else seemed preferable to the gasping angst and doctor-talk I was enduring on this spinning sidewalk to Hell.

          Right about there, with still a minute to go on Satan’s meat grinder, I was injected with a radioactive (NUCLEAR) liquid-like substance, convincing me that my physician either had his fingers crossed during doctor graduation, or missed Hippocratic Oath Day entirely in med school.

          Then, internally irradiated, and just as I realized that I would be billed for this Torquemadaian gauntlet, I was handed milk and a doughnut before re-entering the tube of death for another round of the encircling hummers needed to complete the “comparison study.”

          A comparison study is the data which would define my before & after stressors and broaden the accounts receivables of those dia-prognosticians, whose report generated three months hence will suggest that I’d have been better served, had I gone bowhunting.

 

          RECOMMENDATIONS:

 

          When it’s your turn, arrive at the hospital early, follow the blue line to the green hallway and go through the red door.  Ask the boilerman there for directions to Nuclear Medicine, and before you know it, you’ll have your feet in the stirrups.

          At least your heart, and your car, will be in the right place.

 

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Copyright 2007 B. Elwin Sherman.  All rights reserved.

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