I re-read what I had written about a month ago about the miracle of modern medicine. Today I am chewing on my words, wanting to spit them out.
As I wrote in my previous post (I see it was actually only two weeks ago) the NP in my GP's office (this is like Morse code or something) had said I should see a cardiologist, mostly based on my saying that I became very tired in the afternoon, was occasionally short of breath and that my mother and grandfather had both had heart disease. I was a good little patient, duly calling up for appointments, nodding at tests, forking over the co-pays, all the while wondering, as I monitored my blood pressure day and night, if this wasn't a giant waste of time. In a month's monitoring my morning/evening blood pressure has never gone higher than 116/74 or lower than 86/68. And those are singular scores, most of the time the amounts have clustered near to the 112/73 zone. Perfectly, absolutely normal. I had my heart sonograph on July 27th and there has been absolute silence from any medical office on that. In fact, the office said that if I didn't hear anything that evening, it was all good. I had blood tests August 1st and, once again, absolute silence. What that means, well, who knows?
Meanwhile I am gearing up for my cataract ops next week and the week after. Of course I am nervous, they are operations. They are impacting my eyesight, hopefully in a good way but, still, I am nervous. On top of that I have been subbing full-time since last Wednesday, the 2nd. I need to fill my savings back up after raiding them to pay for the Mercedes Benz of eye lenses.
So we come to the guinea pig/grunt story, the one that sent me into an emotional tizzy last night. Being the conscientious person that I am, I asked how long the cardio stress test that was scheduled for this morning would take. Given that I had to be at the hospital for 6:00 a.m., and I was told that the test is usually an hour and a half, I felt that I was on solid ground telling the school that I would be an hour late this morning (I usually have to clock in by 7:45, school starts at 8:00 . . . 8:45 seemed like a safe bet.) At first the school district took me completely off the roster today; they weren't going to allow me to be an hour late, they were going to parachute another sub, one who isn't familiar with this 4th grade class, or all of the work I have done with them the previous five days, getting them into shape for their permanent teacher who arrives this coming Monday. I was pretty hurt about it, seeing $125 flying away. When I left last night, the school secretary said she was trying to get the district to reverse it but they hadn't replied.
I got into the car and started to cry. All that work, all that hard work.... Why had I done it? This isn't the first time I've been shunted aside, isn't the first time the district has messed me about. And this has been a really tough class but I've made progress with them. Anyway, by the time I arrived home I had worked myself into a tantrum, which Richard had to sit and listen to, adding fuel to the flames by telling me that of course I wouldn't be appreciated, the world is a terrible place, why bother, etc., etc.... I cried some more and then finally turned my attention to this morning's test; no caffeine (including chocolate) after 6 pm, nothing to eat this morning. I woke up at 4 a.m., took a shower with plain shower gel (no lotions or potions) and was ready to leave for the hospital at 5:30 a.m. Richard decided to tag along because it seemed like I'd be going back home and he felt he could hang out at the hospital for an hour and a half.
Checked in at 5:50 a.m., the tech came to get me at 6:10 a.m. So far so good until she sat me in the incredibly frigid testing room and said, "Oh, I don't get my radioactive liquid delivery until 7:30 so just sit there [with my arm outstretched and the IV poking out]." I checked my phone and there was a message from my school saying if I felt I could make it there by 8:45 a.m. they would like me to come in. So I asked the tech "Will I be out of here by 8:20?" (It takes less than 25 minutes to get to the school but I wanted to stop at Starbuck for my coffee.) She said, shouldn't be a problem. Again, so far so good.
The liquid was delivered a bit early, she plugged me in and I was set up with the scanning machine. Shades of when I had all those tests before my hysterectomy! As I lay there for 10 minutes, arms above my head (ouch) I reviewed why I had been so hysterical last night. And it dawned on me that all of this heart stuff might very well be a trigger for me. I was 13 years old when my mother and father sat me down and told me that my mother had a very serious heart condition and I was to be super careful not to upset her because she could die at any time. I lived with that for 3 years until she finally DID die--not of her heart failing but of thyroid cancer. Anyway, I wondered, I really wondered, if the prospect of the cardio test might be getting to me subconsciously, with the cataract thing tossed in for good measure and the concern over subbing. Maybe it was all too much? Hmmm....
Anyway, the scanning only took 10 minutes and then I went over to the room where the "stress test" would take place. It was actually just a little past 7:30 a.m. and I thought, great, the tech said this will only take half an hour, I will be out at 8:00 a.m., in time to get something to eat and drive Richard back home. I was all hooked up laying there under a warmed blanket (the room was SO cold) when the tech told me they'd paged the doctor to find out where he was and he told them he wasn't doing the test, he'd assigned that to his NP (hah, NPs again) but she hadn't known so she was still at home and would be in as soon as she could. The tech had told her to take her time. Take her time??!!! Take her bloody time??!! In as pleasant a voice as I could muster--as by this time the clock edged toward 8 a.m., no sign of the NP, I asked if at this point I would still be able to be out of there by 8:30. The tech looked at me and said "Oh, no, because once this stress test is over, you have to go back to the first tech to have a re-scan of your heart." And I, with a choking voice, told her that I was going to lose $125 if I could not be at work by 8:45.
The tech said, well, you can stop the test then. And I said, to her complete shock because I don't think she thought I'd do it, then stop the test. She said, well we will re-schedule but we have to do it within five days because the radioactive liquid that's in your veins only lasts five days. And I said, well, that's too bad, because I have two more days of work and next week I have a cataract operation and another one the next week. The techs (the other tech had joined by then) said "Oh well, we will have to start from the beginning, the cardiologist won't look at anything that's been done so far." And I said, that's fine, me and my heart are just going to take our chances. I'm done.
And that was that. I went to work, called my GP's office (got voicemail of course) and said I was going to be an un-cooperative patient but really, I feel I've had enough tests--including that blood test for which I have no results thus far that I know of--that they can put into my file for another year. And then, much like Elizabeth in The Paper Bag Princess (Robert Munsch) I skipped off into the sunset. I may not live forever but I will live happily.
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