A Test I Couldn't Cram For

I went into Salt Lake this morning for a stress test, to check how my heart's doing. The objective is similar to the angiogram, but much less invasive because it just involves an IV rather than running a catheter into my leg and up to my heart.

They injected me with a radioactive isotope, and took some images of my heart. Then they shaved little sections of my chest hair so they could hook up the monitor electrodes. (The hair had just barely grown back from the monitor patches I had in the hospital in July. Now I'm going to have to shave the rest of my chest in the morning, because right now it looks like some kind of bizarre jack-o-lantern.)

Then I got on the meanest treadmill in the world. They told me I needed to get my heart rate up to a certain target, then they'd inject me with more isotope, I'd run for a couple more minutes and be done. There are apparently seven possible stages for the treadmill. It starts out slow and flat. Every few minutes it starts a new stage by increasing the speed and the degree of incline. I couldn't get my heart up into the target zone (153 BPM) until stage five, which was 5.0 MPH at 18 degree incline. To give you some idea of how brutal that is, on my home treadmill I can run briefly at 7.0 MPH and 1.5 degree incline; my treadmill only goes to 10 degree incline, and I can only walk at about 4.0 MPH when I have it cranked up that steep.

But I was able to do 2.5 minutes at stage five, and then called it quits (I called it some other things, too, but I won't repeat them here.) The technicians were impressed, I guess I might have broken some kind of patient record; but they said some of the technicians have got up to stage seven on it. I'm not sure I believe that, because it seems like stage seven would involve sprinting straight up the side of their six-story tower building.

Anyway, they gave me a chance to cool down, then put me back under the imaging machine for some fresh pics. I thought they might have to redo some of them because I had my eyes closed, but they said it didn't matter. I guess they can photoshop them if they need to.

After my cardiologist had a chance to look at the before-and-after images and the data from the treadmill, he came in and talked with me about the results. He indicated that everything looks really good. The heart performed well during the stress test. Only about 20% of the heart shows damage from the heart attack. I say "only" because he didn't seem at all concerned, based on how well I've been doing.

The coronary artery with the stent in it is putting through a good supply of blood to the heart. My primary reason for wanting to get the stress test done was to check on the two coronary arteries which didn't close off during the heart attack. He said the blockages in those two arteries was about 40%, which sounded alarmingly high to me. But he said at that percentage they don't even consider going in to open them up, it works better to just treat it with medication.

When they get the results from the lipid panel (cholesterol test) in a few days, he'll decide whether we need to adjust the cholesterol meds. Other than that, he told me I can just keep living my life. He said he doesn't need to see me again till next fall. Between now and then, I'm going to be in training: I want to beat those techs at stage seven.