Stress Test

March 12, 2008

When I handed the receptionist at the cardiovascular center my paperwork, she seemed confused, as if I'd handed her a pile of supermarket coupons. She looked at my paper for a minute, then directed me down a long hallway, through an unmarked door that looked like a door to a hopper or a broom closet. When I reached the door, I turned around and returned to the receptionist to ask if I had heard correctly. "Through there?" I said, pointing down the hall, "Or around there?"

The reception area was sleek and modern, with expensive designer chairs for patients to sit in while they waited. I wondered if I wasn't meant to walk around a large, curving wall that seemed to lead to another, even fancier side of the floor, instead of walking straight to the broom closet. The woman asked to see my paper again, looking even more confused. She asked me to sit down while she made a phone call. I waited for about ten minutes, flipping through medical magazines filled with prescription drug ads and uplifting stories of triumph over adversity, until the woman called me. Again, she told me to walk straight down the hall and through the unmarked door. I was to look for signs to another reception area.

Through the door, down some halls, around a few corners, and I found it. A little less chic than the area where I'd just been, more typical in terms of doctor's office decor — industrial carpeting and boxy industrial upholstered chairs, with dingy gray spots on the walls behind each one, where people have been resting their heads for years. A flat screen television was mounted on the wall, showing a daytime talk show.

A doctor entered the room to explain a procedure to an elderly woman who was there with her adult son. The doctor kept trying to turn the volume down on the set, but couldn't figure it out. Hopefully, he'll do better with the woman's surgery.

I sat and waited, and waited some more until I was told to wait on the other side of the desk, because that's where the technician would call me from. But when the technician did finally call me, she called me from the side of the desk I'd been waiting on to begin with.

The technician was a petite, humorless Asian woman, all business. As she stuck me with electrodes and plugged them into a tattered canvas belt connected to spaghetti wires, I couldn't help thinking how old all of the equipment looked. The EKG monitor flickered green as the technician punched information into the worn keyboard. She asked if I'd ever had a stress test before, and I told her, No. She explained everything slowly, patiently, as if I were mildly retarded. "Would you like me to demonstrate how to walk on the treadmill?" she asked.

"No, I think I can handle it. I've been on treadmills before."

I walked on the treadmill for a few minutes, then the woman warned me it was about to get steeper and faster. It did, but not by much.

"How are you feeling?" the woman asked. "You have to let me know if you get dizzy or start to have any pains."

"I feel fine."

"Okay, it's going to get faster. You can hold onto the bar if you need to, but don't hold too tightly. I'm going to take your blood pressure now."

She said I needed to get my heart rate up to 150 beats per minute for it to be a good test. The treadmill got progressively faster and steeper, and about nine minutes later, I reached the target. "Do you want to keep going?" she asked.

"Why?" I said. "I thought we only had to get it to 150."

"Some people like to keep going to see what their exercise tolerance is."

"My exercise tolerance was reached nine minutes ago."

When I finished, she told me everything looked good, "For my age," which I suppose I should be happy about. I was told to get dressed and have a seat in the reception area to wait to be called for my next test — an ultrasound of my carotid artery. I sat where I'd been sitting before, but after ten minutes was told to sit on the other side of the reception desk so that I'd hear my name when it was called. Again, when the technician called me, she called me from the side I'd been sitting on to begin with.

The young woman led me into a nearby room. In it, a tall and skinny, somewhat nerdy-looking Indian guy with black framed glasses was sitting at a desk, surfing the net on a laptop. He was engrossed and didn't acknowledge us. In the middle of the room was a "bed" and next to that, an ultrasound machine. I was told to lie down. After fiddling with some buttons on the machine, the woman began greasing up the ultrasound wand. As she did, the doctor walked in.

"Hey buddy, howsit goin'?" he said. He said, with such familiarity that I assumed he was talking to the guy on the laptop, but he wasn't; he was talking to me. "What the hell are you doin' here?" he said. "You're a young guy."

I explained the chain of events, my upcoming surgery, and my calcified blood vessels.

"You smoke?" he said.

"No."

I assume he wanted to know because it would have some bearing on my health, but the way he asked, it was more like he wanted to bum a cigarette.

"Look at that vessel," he said, "Beautiful. Be-yoo-tee-ful!"

The technician was gently running the ultrasound wand up and down my neck, but the doctor put his hand on hers and guided the wand further up my neck, digging it deeper. "Like this," he said.

When they finished with one side of my neck, they continued on the other, occasionally freezing the image, taking pictures with the machine.

"Okay, buddy, you're all set."

"Looks good?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes as if it had been a stupid question, and it was silly for me to even be there.

"Looks great."

Another young girl entered the room to hang out. The doctor pushed the guy on the laptop aside and began surfing the internet himself while I cleaned off my neck and put my coat on. I learned that the Indian guy had recently graduated from medical school, or completed his internship. and he'd been online looking for work.

"Here's an interesting statistic," said the doctor, reading from his laptop screen. "One out of every four women has a sexually transmitted disease."

The girl who had just walked in thought he'd said one out of fourteen, but he repeated himself. "One out of every four. Can you believe that?"

"I didn't do it," I said.

He looked at me with a smirk. "Uh, yeah, we know."

Burn.

"Am I good to go?" I said.

"Yeah, man, you're good. Get outta here."

I walked back to work, relieved. Ever since seeing my blood vessels in my hand X-ray, I imagined my head was about to explode. Apparently, it's not.