June 2011: Following my scheduled 5 year colonoscopy I went to my family doctor to review the results. A couple of non cancerous polyps were removed and all seemed well with the world. It had been a few years since my last visit, so the doctor asked how I was feeling otherwise. I told him that I was getting pretty winded when I ran the bases while playing baseball. I had been feeling this way for the past few seasons and just figured that I was out of shape since my breathing would return to normal after a couple pitches.
Well the doctor said that since I was getting "Up in years" that it would probably be a good idea to have a stress test. so we ordered one.
The test: Certain that I was just a little out of shape, I went into the test with a very positive frame of mind. Everything seemed to go perfectly. It took over 8 minutes to get my heart rate up to the 140 bpm target and I had absolutely no fatigue or shortness of breath. Two days later, I get a call from the doctors office saying that the doctor would like to see me today. Shit, this can't be good.
The stress test has three parts, first they inject you with a dye and take a scan of your heart before exercise, following the dye test they put you on a treadmill and have you walk until your heart rate gets to a certain point, all the time monitoring your heart on an ekg machine. Finally you go back and do another scan of the heart so that they can compare before and after images. The dye part of the test showed no abnormalities, however there were a couple of blips on the ekg when my heart rate got up around 137. Doc wants another test :(
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