They didn’t let me wear a shirt!

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I am SO not kidding!  I wore my baggy lay-around-the-house-in yoga pants and a tee shirt, the height of work-out attire, I assure you.  They gave me a hospital gown and I was all - no, you're not gonna make me exercise without a bra, are you?  Uh .. yeah.  We are.
 
Oh man!!  I guess I should have known after looking for pictures and all the men I saw were shirtless.  The gown is only a nod to a woman's modesty in that situation.  Well, besides the fact that I would have run screaming from the room if I didn't at least have the gown.

Anyway.  It wasn't that big a deal really.  Kept my pants and shoes on, put the gown on the top half - a tech stuck the leads all over my chest and sides.  Then I rolled onto one side and the ultrasound lady used her wand with the ice cold gel to look at my heart in a resting state.

Next came the treadmill.

I was under the impression that I would be on the doggone thing for days or something but no, they pretty much put it on a hard core incline to start off and after the next bump to a higher incline and faster speed - I was huffing and puffing just fine, thank you very much.  It had to be less than 10 minutes.
 

And then the tricky part.  Let the gal know I was done so she could stop the treadmill so I could quickly jump off and hop back up on the bed and roll to my side again so the cold gelled wand could be used on me - under stress.  Stop!  Jump!  Roll!  Before your heart has any chance of slowing down.  Like mine was going to!

Once the ultrasound was taken they let me lay for a bit, took my blood pressure a couple more times and then let me put my dignity shirt back on and leave.
Not too horrible and not nearly as bad as I was expecting.  And I must have passed because they said if I didn't - they wouldn't have let me leave.  :)


From what I understand, sometimes they need to use contrast to get a better picture, but that wasn't necessary for me.  My only concern was the ultrasound girl guessed that I used to smoke, she could see it by looking at my lungs.  I'm supposed to have a chest x-ray anyway, so we'll find out what that's about, probably nothing.  But as far as tests go?  The stress test was not as difficult as some of the breathing tests they had me do at the pulmonologist's office.  So if you need to - go forth and test young man.  Woman.  Whomever.  


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