One day my wife says, "Hey, they're having heart scans for calcium build-up for a discount. I think it'd be a good idea if we did this."
I paused the TV and said, "Yeah, sure, sounds great," while having no idea what I was signing up for.
Okay, let's fast-forward to after the test (which was no big deal). Immediately, I get a call from a panicked nurse.
"Mr. West..." She sounded hesitant, a lowly assistant fated to deliver bad news.
"Yes?"
"Um, we got back the test results on your heart screening and...ah...your calcium levels are off the charts!"
Pause. Silence. Sooooo many crickets.
"Am I...am I...dying?"
"No. But you need to make some lifestyle changes."
"Wait...but...wait..."
"We'll send results in the mail."
I did indeed get results in the mail. Very non-specific results which said I was in the high calcium plaque level.
My wife dragged me to a cardiologist and he said, "Hmmmm. These results aren't very specific."
"That's what I said, doc!" Defiantly, I stood my ground. "What can we do about this plaque in my arteries?"
"Well...get Roto-Rooter, maybe." Clearly tickled with himself, I let his joke falter beside my stone face.
"Outside of that," he continued, "I'm going to order a stress test and echocardiogram."
I groaned as he laid out the details of what this entailed.
Couple weeks later, I'm at the hospital awaiting alongside a buncha other old folks in walkers, wheelchairs, and lugging around oxygen tanks (straight from the casinos) to get into my three hour testing grounds. What life must feel like in an old folks home; the ghost of Christmas Future, ho, ho, ho.
The first nurse out of about a zillion, an amiably sleepy guy, comes to get me and explain the lay of the land.
"Now, I'm gonna stick this needle in your arm and then get an IV going."
Suddenly, I'm having PTSD flashbacks from sadistic Nurse Wretched from my days of being a lab rat in a skin study. "But...but, Josh," I whined, "my veins are really tough to find."
He says, "I'm an expert. It's boring to me, really."
Well, far be it from me to wake amiable Josh out of his going-through-the-motions sleepwalking on the job, so I let him do his job. True to his word, he hit it spot-on. Then he takes me back to the death waiting room. Where there's a horrendous drilling sound shaking the walls. Terrified, I look around at my "peers" to see if they're as fearful about the tortures awaiting them as I am, but mercifully for them, they don't have their hearing aids turned on.
Josh slides back in and gathers me up for my echocardiogram. "Meet Gunner, he's a really nice guy," he says and deposits me into the curiously monikered "Gunner's" hands.
"Get your shirt off and lay down facing me, arms up over your head, knees bent, butt back," he orders. The intern with him grimaces when I strip and attempt to do an awkward, backwards pirouette up onto the table, the least comfy contortionist position you could ever attempt. Sadists, the whole lot of them.
Gunner says, "Well, you don't really have to stick your butt out...I just think it's a fun lil' ice-breaker." Gunner and the intern giggle. I turn fifty shades of red.
Soon they're gelling up my chest and searching for my heart.
"Hmmmm..." says Gunner.
"'Hmmmm?' I repeat. "Is that a good 'hmmmm' or a bad 'hmmmm?"
"Well...according to the readings...you're already dead. But I'm sure the machine is just on the blink again." Gunner winks at the intern with a grin. "Pretty sure."
When I'm finally done with the comedy stylings of Gunner and his silent sidekick, Josh snags me again and takes me into another room. A nurse comes out and says, "Hi, I'm Natalie...and I'm here to stress you out."
I force a laugh while remembering a couple of past stress tests I've taken. Pure hell where they put you on a treadmill until you're ready to pass out and your heart explodes. Thankfully, with my arthritic knees, that's an impossibility for me now.
"I'm going to inject you with chemicals that will increase your heartrate. It might feel pretty weird for you," she says.
Wondering how "weird" things might get, I ask the burning question that's flaming through my brain. "Ahhh...has this ever given anyone a...you know, heart attack?"
"Well..." she drawls, digging deep into her nostalgia closet, "there was this one guy who apparently had a heart attack. But it turned out that he was high on cocaine and it simulated a heart attack. If it's any consolation, he loved it."
"Um...yeah, Natalie, that makes me feel soooooo much more comfortable."
After the injection, I'm awaiting for the spasms and seizures and freak-outs that are sure to accompany it, but not much happens. I get jittery (what else is new?), anxious (status quo, says my wife), and headachy, but no big freak-out.
They keep checking on me. "Doing okay?"
"Yeah...just a little anxious, but nothing new."
"Ummmm...your heart rate's off the charts, though."
"Is that...good or bad???"
"Normal," says Natalie.
A little dizzy, I sit up and wait it out while Josh comes back in to sleepily look me over and whisk me away to a tubular machine where he takes multiple pictures of my chest.
And finally, I'm released! Released into the wilds of wheelchairs, walkers, and oxygen tanks. Now...where's my cigarettes?
Speaking of making really stupid life choices, Tex McKenna, teenaged, angsty male witch, just can't help himself. I mean, why else try and find out the identity of the killer who's systematically taking out his high school's bullies (not that Tex will miss them all that much)? Soon enough, Tex and his small group of loyal allies are also in the killer's sites. Check out the mysterious, thrilling, funny, scary, suspenseful, romantic, paranormal adventures of Tex and company in my Tex, the Witch Boy trilogy!
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