I think I passed

Today I had my first stress test. How exciting that was. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to hit the heart rate I needed to hit, due to how tired my body still is. BUT, I did it.

Have you ever had one of these? They're a LONG ordeal. I was at the clinic over 3 hours. First they put in IV in your arm so they can inject you with radioactive stuff so they can take pictures of your heart. Then you have to wait for that to take effect, about 30 minutes. They they bring you in and set you under a machine that takes images of your heart for 25 minutes. The hardest part of that was I had to lay with my arms over my head the whole time. They actually got pretty sore.

Then they send you back out to the waiting room, where you wait for the actual test portion. They take you in for that and stick like 15 electrodes on your body so they can watch your heart while you work out. The Dr is there for that portion, they take your blood pressure every 3 minutes, watch your EKG and see if anything "spectacular" happens.

The Dr told me I only needed to hit an HR of 160 to "pass" the test. I said "Geeze, that's it? I can do that almost running up the steps". My AVERAGE heart rate for Sunday's race was 183 - yes AVERAGE. So I figured 160 would be a breeze. Heck I was already at 90 simply resting. But it did take a little bit. . . . .which the Dr says is a sign that I'm "in shape". Yeah, tell that to my body as I'm trying to climb the equalizer feeling like I'm going to DIE.

Anyway, they stick you on a treadmill, watch all this stuff and bump it up a couple notches every 3 minutes. I guess there are 6 cycles. I got to 4 and the Dr said "that's fine, we don't need anymore". Whew, thank you for that. Then they sent me back out to the waiting room, after injecting me with MORE radioactive solution to wait for another 30 minutes before they took one last set of images of my heart.

I'm already a step ahead of my dad. He went for one of these stress tests a few years back and they didn't even let him go. They checked him right into the hospital and 2 days later cracked his chest open for 6 bypasses. Thankfully, they sent me home and said "go ride your bike". They'll read the tests tomorrow, but right now it's looking like I've just got a large wave of some sort (can't remember what letter it was), which makes it difficult for some to take my blood pressure because you have to listen for the "snap". I guess the "snap" is much more prominent when I'm working out. . . . .of course you can hardly hear it over my deep breathing.

I guess I'll live on to ride another day. Perhaps the radioactive stuff will still be with me on tomorrow night's night ride and I won't need a light cuz I'll just GLOW. Sweet.