The rest of the story

This time it's all good news. There's nothing wrong with me, apparently. Not even thyroid disease.

Let's see. I guess I wrote last almost a week ago. On Monday I waited all day for a call from my gynecologist, and when I didn't (of course) get a call, I finally called the office at about 4:00, which is their cut-off time for answering phone calls on the same day. By the time I had navigated the labyrinthine voice mail system, it was after 4:00, so I wasn't counting on a call back, but I did get a call around 4:30.

The nurse who called acted like I was a bit dense for thinking that my gynecologist would talk to me about a thyroid problem; she said I would have to see a specialist. Okay, fine, thanks for waiting until I begged for that information before you told me. I don't mind losing a whole day when I'm worried about my heart . . .

She gave me the name of endocrinologist, but by then it was too late to call, and I had to wait until Tuesday morning. I called, explained my situation, and said that I would like to make an appointment. The person I was speaking with asked me if there were any particular days that I couldn't come, and I said, well, if the doctor had anything available on Friday, that would be great, because I had another appointment in the afternoon, and that would keep me from having to take time off work on two separate days.

She laughed, and said, "Oh, it won't be that soon!" and my heart sank, thinking, oh, no, it's going to be one of those deals where I can't get in to see him for weeks. I said, well, no, then, anytime would be fine. She put me on hold, and came back and said, "I hardly ever get to say this, but we just had a cancellation, can you come tomorrow??" Thank goodness. I wasn't looking forward to any more time just waiting.

The endocrinologist was wonderful, I liked him a lot. I was almost sorry that I won't be seeing him any more. But not, you know, that sorry.

He examined me, tested my reflexes (Bob said, "Slow, right?" No, smart aleck, they were fine.) He asked me a lot of questions, and he actually listened to the answers. He didn't seem rushed, he acted like he had time enough to talk to me, which is rare, I think. He asked me to wait while he took notes, and then he told me that there was nothing wrong with my thyroid.

He said that the estrogen I'm taking can make the test results difficult to interpret, and yes, my thyroid levels do look a little high, but he was confident that they really aren't, that it's just a matter of interpretation. He said I don't have any of the symptoms of high thyroid, my thyroid gland isn't enlarged or anything, and he's 100% sure that my thyroid is fine. I said, "So . . . what does that mean?" He said that he wasn't a cardiac specialist, so he couldn't really answer other than to say that he was sure it wasn't my thyroid. He said I seemed pretty healthy, and maybe it was too much caffeine, or stress, but he couldn't really offer anything else.

It was a relief that it wasn't a thyroid problem, particularly since it had looked like it was going to be a high thyroid problem. But anyway, it wasn't that. Strike that off the list.

Up until then, I had been thinking that the stress echocardiogram that I had scheduled for Friday was going to be a formality; now I was thinking that they could very well find something, and I was getting a little bit scared.

But again, I didn't have a whole lot of time to get too freaked out about it, since there was only a day between the news that my thyroid was fine, and the heart function test. So Friday afternoon I went back to the cardiologist's office and had the echocardiogram, which involved pasting a bunch of electrodes to my chest and having a sort of combination EKG and sonogram. She hooked me up, then had me lie on my side while she ran the sonogram thing over me and watched my heart on the screen.

It seemed to take a long time, and sometimes I could hear it . . . at one point, the first time, I guess, I thought, "What is that sound?" It sounded like, I don't know, highway traffic, or somebody rolling something down the hallway, and then I realized with a start, "Hey, that's my heart!" It was kind of scary. Kind of a wet, pulsing sound. Man. It was right around there were I started to get a bit frightened, and really wonder if there was going to be anything bad.

And then the technician said, "That's interesting . . . " and I couldn't help myself, I said, "What??" She said that the machine was playing back the tape too slowly or something. It was recording it okay, but the playback was slow. She said it had been working fine in the morning, and she'd just used it for someone else, so she wasn't sure what was wrong, and I was thinking, oh, fine, I'm going to have to do this all over again, but she said it seemed to be okay otherwise, and whatever it was wasn't a problem.

So then, I had to get up and go walk and run on a treadmill, still hooked up, until my heart rate got way up, at which time they would do another echo. I guess I walked for about twenty minutes, at progressively higher speeds and elevations. They took my blood pressure about five or six times throughout the process, and there was a nurse who had come in to monitor the procedure, I assume in case something happened, they could revive me.

But nothing did, except I got really tired.

Oh, and before they had me get on the treadmill, the technician went and showed the results of the first test to the cardiologist, then came back and said it was okay to go ahead, which I guess meant they were fairly sure the treadmill test wouldn't kill me.

When they told me it was time, I had to jump off the treadmill and run over to the table and lie down in exactly the same position I'd been in before--the technician said she had about a minute to get the test completed after I got off the treadmill, so not to dawdle. I laid there, huffing and puffing, while she did it again, then she went and got the cardiologist again, and he came in to talk to me.

He said that he didn't see any loss of heart function, and no blockages (which is what I had been secretly fearing was wrong), that, as far as he was concerned, there was absolutely nothing wrong with me at all. So . . . what now? I asked.

He asked me if I had been under any more stress than usual lately, and I said, well, my job is kind of stressful, but not really all that bad. He said, well, it might be too much caffeine, or it might not be anything that we will ever be able to pinpoint. I told him that it had gotten better -- it was only doing it a couple of times a day now, whereas a week ago it was going it a few times an hour -- and he just kind of shrugged and said that it wasn't anything identifiable anyway, and he didn't think I should worry about it.

I asked him if I should keep the follow up appointment I had with him in mid-October, and he said he didn't see any reason to. So after I got dressed (after I cleaned the ultrasound goop off me and got dressed, that is), I went out to the desk and cancelled that appointment.

So I don't know what to think, really, but I'm going to stop worrying about it. Bob met me at home and we went out to Joe's Crab Shack. It's expensive, but as Bob said, it's where we always go when we want to celebrate me not having a life-threatening illness, and he didn't want to break the string.

Now that I'm not afraid I'm going to have a heart attack, I feel a little freer to push myself at the gym. I did my usual 20 minute mile in 16 minutes today. Although really, I just did it to get it finished with, because, since they're renovating the gym, the televisions were offline. Off the grid? Off, at any rate.

Last weekend I got to watch What Not to Wear again, the Megan episode. This weekend there was no distraction at all. Bob said I should keep a cassette player in the car for just such an emergency (I believe he was being sarcastic), and I guess I should. Or something like that. This is why I need an iPod. I've been trying to get a free one using this (as Dave called it) pyramid scheme (I signed up for it as one of Misty's referrals, but I don't think she's gotten hers yet, either), but while about twenty people have signed up through my link, only three have completed the process. I need five to get a free one.

I've almost given up, but I know it takes awhile for credit to register, so I still have hope, albeit scant.