Annual visit to Cardiology

(Click on the Image to view the video)

This morn­ing I walked down to Sam­sum, across from Cot­tage Hos­pi­tal, for my annu­al car­di­ol­o­gy tread­mill stress test. I was sit­ting after the col­lec­tion of the ini­tial rest data await­ing get­ting on the tread­mill with the goal of get­ting my heart rate to 85% of my age defined max of 155 beats per minute. So I popped up, grabbed my iPhone and record­ed these lit­tle movies.

I was able to get my heart rate up to 144, 93% of max for my age. Up until today I was under­stand­ing that I could not get my heart rate that high because of the beta-block­er med­ica­tion (Coreg) I take morn­ing and night.

But anon, the beta-block­ing stuff appar­ent­ly just whacks off attempts by the ole pump to jump or spike above the max rate. Too weird as last year I went in for the same test and those tech­ni­cians told me I could not get my heart rate up using the tread­mill because of the beta-block­ers so they gave me a shot of some nuclear stuff that dilat­ed my veins and arter­ies AS IF I’d exercised.

The goal on the test was 85% of max to get good data so I was pleased to get it up to 93% after 13 min­utes on the tread­mill. That was cer­tain­ly the hard­est part of the test. The sec­ond hard­est part was when they abrupt­ly stopped the test at which time I am to imme­di­ate­ly step off the tread­mill and lay back on the table next to the tread­mill for a sec­ond ultra­sound. The tech­ni­cian starts tak­ing ultra­sound images while am am asked to hold my breath at sev­er­al points! A real chal­lenge imme­di­ate­ly after the exer­cise as I’m gulp­ing for air while being asked to “hold”.