The pump still works — I think!

A couple of weeks ago I had a stress test to find out how strong my heart is. The idea was to have me walk fast on a treadmill while connected to an ekg machine. This procedure takes just a few minutes. But my legs gave out before the ekg got a reading, so the test was aborted and rescheduled with a chemical stress test, which I had today.

This visit took almost 4 hours. I showed up at 10:00 a.m. and they got started at 10:30. First they set up an iv and pumped some radioactive material into my veins. Then they sent me back to the waiting room for a half hour, while the radioactive stuff permeated my system. Then they took pictures of my heart in action, with the help of my now radioactive blood.

Back to the waiting room for a half hour. Then back to the examination room, where they hooked me back up to the ekg, and injected me with a drug that stresses the heart for 6 minutes. This was uncomfortable — not painful, just uncomfortable. Slight headache, queezy stomach and flushed face. If the nurse had not told me to expect that, I would have thought something was going wrong. It was a long 6 minutes.

Back to the waiting room for a half hour, then to another photo session. I finally got out the door at 1:30 p.m.

Next comes a biopsy of my stomach. The doctor aborted that procedure a week ago because he didn’t have enough information on my heart to be comfortable in applying anesthesia. Now he does, hopefully, and I’m scheduled for next Tuesday.

All these tests were scheduled because of a blood test showing a drop in hemoglobin,which is often caused by internal bleeding. The hemoglobin level came back up, but my dialysis doctor wants to be sure I’m ok. One side of me is getting impatient with all these tests interfering with my non-dialysis days; the other side is thankful that my dialysis doctors are sharp-eyed and careful!