“Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.” ~~Unknown
August 15th rolled around all too quickly. There had been no word from the NSF in regards to the Icebreaker status. But it was time to make the long 2 1/2hr trek to Anchorage for my appointment with the Alaska Heart Institute. This was something I was not necessarily looking forward to.
As the saying goes, the "real" Alaska is just 20 minutes outside of Anchorage. And if you're not here for the real Alaska, then why are you here?
After having lived in a couple of more "remote" areas of Alaska, the city of Anchorage is an assault on one's senses. Loud noises, rush hour traffic, strip malls, crime, speed demons. I had to remind myself that the rest of the world isn't like sleepy little Seward with their Xtra-Tuffs and carhartts that still relies on good ole fashioned stop signs.
The motto when dealing with Anchorage is: Get in and get out as quickly as possible.
My boss Wendy wanted to meet me at the Heart Institute to sit with me while I went thru the stress echo. So I was supposed to meet her and Dave there around 10:30. Fighting mid morning traffic and some congestion caused by road construction, I pulled into the Alaska Heart Institute parking lot.
Walking into that building was about the worse part of the entire experience. I was the youngest patient there. The majority of the patients present had to have been at least in their sixties and older. Nearly all were hooked to oxygen machines and moving to the slow roll of their walkers.
My skin crawled. I felt as though I was being walked to my death as they escorted me through the building. As I sat in the stress echocardiogram waiting room, each doctor that walked by me gave me a slight quizzical look, as if to say, “What are you doing here?”
Don’t worry…that question arose several times before the day was over.
I was finally ushered into the examination room where the nurse took my resting heart rate. She clucked to herself and wrote a few notes down.
She looked me up and down and asked, “So, why are you here?”
“Um…I was referred by a clinic in Seward that I needed a Stress Echo because I had an abnormal EKG.”
“Ah, an abnormal EKG. Ok. Well, you’re quite a bit younger than most of the patients we see in here,” she said as she busied herself with getting me hooked up to another EKG. I eyed the machine with trepidation. It looked as if it was the mother of all EKG machines. It was gigantic and it had about a million cords coming off of it, all of them strapped to various locations around my chest, above and below my heart.
“So what we’re going to do is get you into this gown, tape it up so you’re not exposing yourself and then we’re going to take an ultrasound of your heart at rest. And then we’re going to get you started on the treadmill. Now, you’re going to have to run for as long as you’re able. You’re young and healthy so we’re going to push you as far as we can. So pace yourself, and whatever you do, don’t jump off the treadmill.”
Ok.
Pace myself.
Don’t jump off the treadmill.
The ultrasound tech came in to take an image of my heart at rest. She took one look at me and snorted. “Should’a brought a book. She’s a young one. We’re gonna be here for a while,” she said sarcastically as she slung a glob of cold goo onto the ultrasound wand and rotated it over my chest.
I lay there on my side observing her watching the screen. I wanted to ask her, “Is there a heart in there? Do I have one?” But I managed to contain myself and instead lay there quietly waiting for the next round of instructions.
After the ultrasound, a man walked in wearing a long white jacket.
Ah, the doctor. Finally.
He was the man who was going to sit down with me and explain the results of the EKG and the ultrasound. He was the man with all the answers.
“Her resting heart rate is at 47 bpm,” the nurse piped up.
The doctor looked at me in much of the same way the nurse had when she first saw me. He strode over and looked at the image of my heart at rest, walked back and looked at me again. He shrugged. “You look fine. Do you feel alright?” he asked.
I nodded, a little uncertain as to how to respond. “I feel fine.”
“Well, this is how we’re going to do this,” he said. “We’re going to start you out at level one with a 8% incline. With each level, the speed of the belt is going to increase as well as the incline 2% each time. The first three levels you’re going to be able to walk through them. Around the fourth level, you might have to start at a brisk jog. We’ll take your blood pressure with each level and if at any point you need to stop, just tell us. Whatever you do, don’t jump off the tread mill. Okay?”
I nodded and stepped up onto the treadmill, ready for level one.
As the saying goes, the "real" Alaska is just 20 minutes outside of Anchorage. And if you're not here for the real Alaska, then why are you here?
After having lived in a couple of more "remote" areas of Alaska, the city of Anchorage is an assault on one's senses. Loud noises, rush hour traffic, strip malls, crime, speed demons. I had to remind myself that the rest of the world isn't like sleepy little Seward with their Xtra-Tuffs and carhartts that still relies on good ole fashioned stop signs.
The motto when dealing with Anchorage is: Get in and get out as quickly as possible.
My boss Wendy wanted to meet me at the Heart Institute to sit with me while I went thru the stress echo. So I was supposed to meet her and Dave there around 10:30. Fighting mid morning traffic and some congestion caused by road construction, I pulled into the Alaska Heart Institute parking lot.
Walking into that building was about the worse part of the entire experience. I was the youngest patient there. The majority of the patients present had to have been at least in their sixties and older. Nearly all were hooked to oxygen machines and moving to the slow roll of their walkers.
My skin crawled. I felt as though I was being walked to my death as they escorted me through the building. As I sat in the stress echocardiogram waiting room, each doctor that walked by me gave me a slight quizzical look, as if to say, “What are you doing here?”
Don’t worry…that question arose several times before the day was over.
I was finally ushered into the examination room where the nurse took my resting heart rate. She clucked to herself and wrote a few notes down.
She looked me up and down and asked, “So, why are you here?”
“Um…I was referred by a clinic in Seward that I needed a Stress Echo because I had an abnormal EKG.”
“Ah, an abnormal EKG. Ok. Well, you’re quite a bit younger than most of the patients we see in here,” she said as she busied herself with getting me hooked up to another EKG. I eyed the machine with trepidation. It looked as if it was the mother of all EKG machines. It was gigantic and it had about a million cords coming off of it, all of them strapped to various locations around my chest, above and below my heart.
“So what we’re going to do is get you into this gown, tape it up so you’re not exposing yourself and then we’re going to take an ultrasound of your heart at rest. And then we’re going to get you started on the treadmill. Now, you’re going to have to run for as long as you’re able. You’re young and healthy so we’re going to push you as far as we can. So pace yourself, and whatever you do, don’t jump off the treadmill.”
Ok.
Pace myself.
Don’t jump off the treadmill.
The ultrasound tech came in to take an image of my heart at rest. She took one look at me and snorted. “Should’a brought a book. She’s a young one. We’re gonna be here for a while,” she said sarcastically as she slung a glob of cold goo onto the ultrasound wand and rotated it over my chest.
I lay there on my side observing her watching the screen. I wanted to ask her, “Is there a heart in there? Do I have one?” But I managed to contain myself and instead lay there quietly waiting for the next round of instructions.
After the ultrasound, a man walked in wearing a long white jacket.
Ah, the doctor. Finally.
He was the man who was going to sit down with me and explain the results of the EKG and the ultrasound. He was the man with all the answers.
“Her resting heart rate is at 47 bpm,” the nurse piped up.
The doctor looked at me in much of the same way the nurse had when she first saw me. He strode over and looked at the image of my heart at rest, walked back and looked at me again. He shrugged. “You look fine. Do you feel alright?” he asked.
I nodded, a little uncertain as to how to respond. “I feel fine.”
“Well, this is how we’re going to do this,” he said. “We’re going to start you out at level one with a 8% incline. With each level, the speed of the belt is going to increase as well as the incline 2% each time. The first three levels you’re going to be able to walk through them. Around the fourth level, you might have to start at a brisk jog. We’ll take your blood pressure with each level and if at any point you need to stop, just tell us. Whatever you do, don’t jump off the tread mill. Okay?”
I nodded and stepped up onto the treadmill, ready for level one.
“No worries, honey. You just do what you have to do. Remember to pace yourself, you’re gonna be running for a while.”
Level four passed by and I hadn’t broken a sweat or gotten out of breath yet. “How are you feeling?” the doctor asked.
“Fine.”
Level five slipped by and I was finally beginning to feel it in my shins. “How are you feeling?” the doctor asked.
“I feel fine.”
“She’s not even out of breath,” the nurse commented as she watched me run.
The machine had gone into level six where I was running at an 18% incline at 5 mph. This time I finally felt like I was getting a little worked.
“Do you want to keep going?” the doctor asked.
Sweat was starting to pour into my eyes and I could feel a twinge in my shins with each pound of my foot. I hadn’t run since April when I first got back into Alaska. I knew I was going to walk away with shin splints.
“Do you think I need to keep going?” I asked. “I mean, I feel fine. My heart doesn’t hurt. My shins hurt.”
“Alright, let’s stop the machine.”
With those words the team of three went into action. The treadmill slowed. They rushed me from the treadmill to the cot where I was laid on my side so the ultrasound technician could get a reading of my heart. Since there was no opportunity for a cool down phase as in most work out sessions, I was huffing and puffing for air as they flipped me on my side on the table.
This I felt was the hardest part of the entire ordeal. Attempting to hold my breath for them so they could get a good reading of my heart was a difficult task. My heart was beating like crazy and my lungs craved air to slow it all down.
But soon it was all over. I laid there on the table catching my breath, feeling my heart rate settle as the doctor and ultra sound technician looked over the images of my heart. They were comparing the ones of my heart at rest to the ones of my heart under stress.
I laid there watching them, searching for any tell tale signs of concern on their faces. Needless to say, this guy had a decent poker face; I couldn’t get a read on him at all.
“Everything looks good to me,” he finally said.
I exhaled. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath.
The doctor turned to me. “You’re healthy. There’s nothing wrong with your heart."
"We were looking for possible thickening of your heart walls, a thing called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM), but everything looks good. Your valves look good, the walls of your heart look good. Do you want to see the images?”
I agreed instantly. Who would pass up an opportunity to look at images of their own heart?
He pointed out my valves working at rest and then under stress. Even to my untrained eye, they looked to be working the same. He then pointed out the walls of my heart. “I’d say you’re good to go. Maybe, and I mean maybe, later down the line when you’re like sixty, you might want to keep the possible thought of HCM in the back of your mind. But you’re fine. You’re well above the average for your age. You ran for fourteen and a half minutes when the average for women your age with this test is about ten minutes. Good job.”
With those words he left the room, probably to go see patients who actually needed his medical attention. The nurse gave me a glass of water to drink and started unhooking the EKG cables from me.
She leaned in and whispered. “You could have made it to level seven.”
I laughed. “But did I need to?”
The ultrasound technician and nurse shook their heads. “Doesn’t matter. You could have done it for us. We’ve never seen a woman make it to level seven. We wanted to see you complete level seven.”
I agreed instantly. Who would pass up an opportunity to look at images of their own heart?
He pointed out my valves working at rest and then under stress. Even to my untrained eye, they looked to be working the same. He then pointed out the walls of my heart. “I’d say you’re good to go. Maybe, and I mean maybe, later down the line when you’re like sixty, you might want to keep the possible thought of HCM in the back of your mind. But you’re fine. You’re well above the average for your age. You ran for fourteen and a half minutes when the average for women your age with this test is about ten minutes. Good job.”
With those words he left the room, probably to go see patients who actually needed his medical attention. The nurse gave me a glass of water to drink and started unhooking the EKG cables from me.
She leaned in and whispered. “You could have made it to level seven.”
I laughed. “But did I need to?”
The ultrasound technician and nurse shook their heads. “Doesn’t matter. You could have done it for us. We’ve never seen a woman make it to level seven. We wanted to see you complete level seven.”
congrats, Fran! So glad you are A-ok!
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