TORTURED!

In order for me to go under the knife to clear out my carotid artery, I had to have a number of pre-tests from my cardiologist, GP, and pre-surgical procedures from the hospital.

As I finished up with the cardiologist, he started to go through my medical records and noticed I needed an Echocardiogram and a nuclear stress test. This is not good for me! It is the worst day of the year and frankly I'd rather die first.

The very first thing they do is the echocardiogram. A young lady, rather gorgeous, escorts me to the room where this procedure occurs. "Take off your shirt and lie down!" she says. OK, I'm hungry, delirious and have a headache, I was just wondering if this was for the test.

If you remember the ban roll-on deodorant, imagine someone taking that and pushing it into your ribs, so hard that you wince in pain, enough so that you want to scream at them to take it easy. Of course, I don't, being a manly man, who is already on the verge of calling for my mommy. This is obviously my mother talking to me from the grave, telling me I am getting it for all the things she didn't catch me at!

Once they are done with the scan, they send me to the waiting room to wait for the next act of torture. Mind you I'm willing to talk if they will let me. By now I am hungry, and I have a headache from lack of coffee.

They come and get me and off I go this small closet, where they will ask me my name and birthday, just as they did with the echo test. I sit in a chair and am interviewed, and they send in this young fellow who is taking everything in stride, including sticking me with a port where they will inject a nuclear isotope into me and cause me more anguish.

Asking me my name and birthday, he asks also if I ever had this test before. I answer in the affirmative and he says: "Well then, you know what's coming!" He injects something into the port and tells me to go wait in the waiting room once again.

Out comes the isotope man and brings me back to another room with a scanner. "Lie on the bed with your arms stretched over your head and lie perfectly still for 9 minutes. Laying down and stretching I feel that same headache in the back of my head, which is now even worse because of the added pressure. When he says: "Lay still" I immediately have an itch I want to scratch but can't, and restless leg is starting to kick in. This is so much fun!

After the agony of the scan, guess what? Again, they send back into the waiting room. I wait and out they come, this time I go in for the big one, the stress test.

Escorted into the very back of the building I enter a room with a treadmill and a bed. The young lady who escorted me says: "Take off your shirt and lie down!" I think: "Wow! Twice in one day, I must be something else!" Then reality sets in. She is sticking sensors on my torso from the treadmill. I ask if I am doing the treadmill and she informs me that I am not, but they will be monitoring my heart during the procedure. I lay on the bed and the executioner enters the room, pulls out a needle to inject the isotope into my veins. Slowly my inner body temperature rises, causing a sick sensation of hot blood, my head ready to explode from the combination of heat and isotopes. My stomach is starting to turn and I am breaking out in a sweat, I want to yell at them to turn the thing off! After what seems a lifetime, the executioner reenters the room and injects something that calms my anxiety and the horrible sense of the isotope.

I get off the table, but I am wobbly, after all, I am 71! They decide to think outside the box, that is: send me to the waiting room.

Out they come one more time, this time the executioner escorts me to the torture chamber where they made me stretch out for 9 minutes. "Lay down on the bed once again and stretch, this time for only 7 minutes!" Great, they're taking pity on me!

After the ordeal, I am able to go home! Glory be to the Highest and peace on Earth!

I go downstairs to take out my parking receipt to give to the valet. It is 5:30 PM, dark and I am in a hurry to deal with the Friday night traffic. There is no valet! There is no key box! I go inside and ask the young lady at the reception desk where the valet is.

"Oh, he went home!" and hands me a set of keys. They are not my keys! "These are not my keys!" "You sure? Did you check your pockets?" "Why the Hell would I take a parking receipt from a valet and pocket the keys?" "Hmm, let me call him."

This is all I need after the day I just had! She calls, the dummy asks a bunch of questions, and tells her to check her area, the key box that is in the closet and in her pocketbook. After a second call to the genius, he comes up with an idea: check the car in the parking lot, maybe the keys are in there. Out we go and I spot my car, we go to it and sure enough, in the car on the console sits my keys, in an open parking lot, where someone could steal it. Happy to see the car I dismiss the young lady and thank her. I get in and start the car, out of nowhere there is a loud noise, it is Spanish music coming from my radio! The idiot was listening to my radio with the sound way up!