Today I participated in a stress test of my heart. That’s where, in my case, a male Nurse Practitioner (a nurse that acts like a doctor, lots of times far better) and a girl in a blue jump suit (like they wear in county jails) attached EKG probes all over my body then planted me on a treadmill running at 3 mph and told me to walk till I dropped. Actually, they just told me to let them know when it became painful or when I was just to pooped to continue. The legs started giving out first because I never, ever, walk anywhere at 3 mph so the pace was a bit much. They slowed it to 2.5 mph to accommodate that problem for me, thankfully. Then the skin covering my left shoulder-blade started going numb, then it felt like it was burning, as did most of my left arm. I shared this info but they didn’t seem to be impressed so I pressed on. In truth, I wasn’t too concerned about my left arm either because it always tingles a bit and is always colder than my right arm. I blame all that on faulty nerves.

Once the pain became a bit much, and I had confirmed that I met the minimum BPM increase for my suspicious heart, I cried “Uncle” and they stopped the machine. Leaving me connected to the EKG unit, they put a chair on the tread mill behind me so I could sit during the 5-minute cool down period. All the while they kept the EKG machine running, sharing little knowing glimpses at each other and nodding, which wasn’t lost on me. It was obvious one saw something out of line and shared it for confirmation.

They took all their findings and left to confer with their staff, they said, and suggested that I sit down and wait, which I did. They were gone for a while. Finally, the NP reappeared and shared the good news that during the cool down period, as well as during the 30 heart monitor I recently did, they detected PVC’s of some sort that aren’t normal. Then I was told I was getting a new blood pressure medicine, Metoprolol Tartrate (a Beta Blocker), to take in addition to the other two blood pressure meds I currently take. I asked about the redundancy of taking so many different kinds of BP meds but didn’t get a reasonable answer. So, I’ll toss that one to my PC doctor who knows everything.

Now, about prescriptions. My new bottle of pills directs me to “Take one tablet by mouth twice a day.” I’ve seen this many times previously and always wondered at the wording, but seeing it again on my new prescription made me wonder just exactly how that should be done. I know what they mean, but I can’t help wonder how a more literal person than me would decipher the process. To me it means I should take one tablet, retrieve it, then take it again later in the day. They only way to do that, of course, would be to tie a string on it the first time. The problem is the pills are really small so I’d have to work on devising a way to attach the string.

I think it’s obvious I’m not going to be tying string to a pill any time soon because I’m pretty sure swallowing something like that would make me gag. If it didn’t on the way down, it surely would on the way back up. Nope. Not going to do it.

It’s time for me to rest and complete my stress test recovery process which includes a nap. It’s either that that makes me drowsy, or the big lunch Diane made me eat on our way home. I had a small chicken fried steak, hash browns, two eggs, three pancakes, and a cup of coffee. Whatever the reason, a nap is going to fix it.

Later.