HELL!

This is not a fire and brimstone sermon, no this is what my day was like at the cardiologist the other day!

My appointment was for 11:30 AM, and I was scheduled for a PVR (To check for blood clots in my legs so I can save money on Plavix, (to help prevent blood clotting).

After that ordeal, I would then go and get a nuclear stress test. This was after the day before, going for an echocardiogram, a carotid scan and get fitted for a halter. (I really don’t have the chest for a halter, or the legs for a mini.)

So this young medical woman, very friendly, in fact she asked me to take off my clothes down to my underwear, (In front of an open window!) gets me to lay down on this table, and begins to place these pressure inducing strips on my ankles, calves and thighs, applying pressure to read the blood flow. When we are done, she takes me to this techie guy, fresh from the Philippines, who says he will put a needle in my arm, that it will pinch! Maybe in Manila it pinches, but in Smithtown, NY, it hurts!

Then I am led to this room with what looks like an MRI machine. You lay on a bed, and it takes you into the scanner. You have to lay on your back, with both your arms over your head, being very still! After a while, you arm sockets start to hurt!

After the SOB tortures me, I have to wait in the waiting room for an hour or more. Finally, after watching the movie ‘Titanic’ with: Leonardo De Caprio, Kate Winslet and Kathy Bates, on the TV, we go into another room where he starts to stick nuclear meds into my arm through the tube that is sticking out of it. This is getting very sore, and it hurts, just like it pinches in Manila! This is the stress test part: all the while I’m thinking I’m still going on a thread mill! As they inject more stuff into my arm, they keep asking me how I feel. That part doesn’t bother me, but the arm is really sore. Finally he comes with one more needle and says that the stuff I’m getting will get rid of all the meds that are in my body. This goes right to my head!



“OK, you can go into the waiting room again, and we will call you for a few more pictures, and you can go home!"

This is at 2:30 pm. I sit through ‘Meet the Fockers’ another movie with Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller. I watch the whole Focker movie and then some. Finally they call me again. And, once again the scan with the arms over my head, perfectly still, the tube still in my arm!

I leave the place at 4:30 pm! That is 5 whole hours of hell, waiting, torture and taking off and putting on, my clothes!