The Power of Negative Thinking

Tuesday Evening: 9:36 pm

The past 8 days have been—with apologies to Norman Vincent Peale—a testimony to the power of negative thinking. On the 20th of November I honestly answered a question asked to me by a doctor concerning any new symptoms related to my heart that I had been experiencing. The truth was that I have had some exertion induced tightness in my chest along with potent heartburn. Immediately I was scheduled for a nuclear stress test. For the past 8 days I have been doing a very bad job of accentuating the positive. Discomfort and tightness in the chest for a 65 year old man doing strenuous exercise doesn’t have to mean blockages, stints, and a new bland diet of tasteless food. It could very well just be really bad acid reflux. But the human mind is an unreliable optimist, preferring as it does to play out the worst case scenarios during every fleeting moment of reflection. The wait has been intolerable. As soon as I heard the doctor use the word blockages, I have felt a barrage of discomfort in the chest area, the power of suggestion being the most powerful of drugs. At least I hope its the power of suggestion.

So, Pam made butter chicken for dinner tonight, my last meal before the big test in the morning. While we both stood around the Instant pot watching it come together she deadpanned, “Well, if the tests tomorrow don’t go well and you have to go on a bland diet, I figure we should go out with a bang!” Although I’ve always been the smart-ass in the family, my amazing wife has her moments.

What I know at this point is that this particular test takes 4 hours. It involves injecting some sort of dye into my bloodstream, a lot of sitting around waiting, then injecting various drugs into my bloodstream to speed up my heart rate to marathon running levels, then taking pictures of the blood making its way through all the valves and arteries surrounding my heart, then more sitting around waiting. This entire process is repeated as often as is required after which the professionals in charge of the test will hopefully be able to provide me with definitive news as to my condition—clogged arteries or too much spicy food.

I’m thinking that sleep will be fitful tonight, full of crazy dreams. Knowing me I’ll dream about shrimp creole, jambalaya, hot sausages, and Nashville-hot chicken, wake up ravenously hungry only to be reminded that I’m not allowed to eat or drink anything until noon.

Wednesday Morning: 7:30 am

Arrived at Henrico Doctor’s Hospital on Parham. Despite the fact that she would be sitting around in a waiting room for four hours, Pam had insisted upon accompanying me. We found the correct waiting room and I noticed how old everyone looked. This was not an encouragement. Within five minutes a nurse called my name and I made the first of what would be four different trips behind the curtain, this one to make sure that I was who I claimed to be and to secure an IV in my arm along with the aforementioned dye, after which it was back to the waiting room for me.

Wednesday Morning: 8:15 am

My second summons brought me to a giant machine called the NM/CT 850. My job would be to lay completely still with my arms awkwardly stretched over my head, while the rest of me was slid into the metal cylinder whose job it was to take a nine minute picture of my resting heart, followed by a minute long CT scan. This all was pulled off without incident and I was once again shuffled back to the waiting room where I discovered my wife in an animated conversation with a lovely church lady who used to work for Ukrops and dearly loved “Mr. Bobby.” By this time I was extremely hungry and quite done with sitting in the waiting room. So, I began walking the length of the hall outside the door. It was during one such walk that I discovered that my IV had sprung a leak. Perhaps too much walking and not enough sitting. I used a tissue to tidy up the drips and settled in for more waiting. On the plus side, I got my steps for the day in!

Wednesday Morning: 9:50 am

This was going to be the fun part. I was ushered in to a different room behind the curtain where I was asked to lie down and make myself comfortable—a ridiculous suggestion under the circumstances. Soon, a nurse practitioner, Jennifer, joined me as the technicians were about to inject the racing drug. I was told to expect a little shortness of breath. As is my custom during medical procedures of any kind, I close my eyes and keep my mouth shut. About a minute or so in Jennifer asked me, “How are you feeling?” I answered “Not good.” She replied, “well you look like you feel nothing!” The truth was that both arms and my neck were experiencing extreme discomfort. My head was hurting but there was no shortness of breath. Fortunately, the discomfort was brief and soon I was being offered a straw attached to a styrofoam cup filled with Pepsi. It was the most delicious soft drink I had ever tasted. Then they unhooked all the EKG monitors from my chest and escorted me back to the waiting room where I was instructed to stay for “about an hour”. In the one highlight of the day I was given permission to eat and offered stale crackers and peanut butter.

Wednesday Morning: 11:15 am

My last trip behind the curtain was for my last nine minute photograph of my heart post-test in the cylinder. Once this was completed I was told that I was free to go. My Cardiologist would read all the results and be in touch with me “probably by the end of the week.”

As we were walking to the car Pam asked me, “So, how was it?” My answer was, in hindsight, extremely dumb. I said something like, “That was like the worst kind of medical procedure ever, what with all the waiting around…” Pam’s response was pretty classic. Something like, “Seriously? That was the worst medical procedure ever??” After a timely pause she added, “It’s not like it was chemo!”

So now the test has been done and next up is…more waiting. For some reason I was thinking that they would be able to look at what was happening in real time and know exactly what the issue was right away. Apparently not. When I got home and had some soup for lunch I developed a killer headache that Tylenol was powerless against. It then dawned on me, (after Pam suggested the idea), that I hadn’t had my morning coffee. Problem solved.

Final observations:

Thanks to Medicare, probably 95% of the insanely inflated cost of this procedure will be born by my fellow American taxpayers, for which I would like to extend my gratitude. Secondly, as I lay there watching the nurse hook me up to the EKG machine it occurred to me that in this day and age where I can have a clear conversation with someone on the other side of the world using a wireless smart phone, where I can change the channel on my television using a wireless remote control, they are still hooking up EKG’s with what seems like a dozen cords. What the heck? But it was a medical procedure and I had my eyes closed and my mouth shut.