Sensei Grows Old, Part 1

Post by **sensei** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 6:42 pm

Partly in response to Vapalla's caution not to be too much of a stranger...

Cue "Theme to the Good, the Bad, and the Elderly"

Friday I got up way too early, took my pills with a teaspoon of water, looked longingly at my empty coffee cup, and took off through a dense fog (inside and out) to have the Stress Test that my doctor had ordered. (Background: nearly all of Sensei's male relatives in the previous generation had bought the farm by age 52, mostly thanks to heart failure, though smoking, drinking to excess, and avoiding annual checkups like the plague must have contributed to their demises.)

Got there and partially undressed to have the IV line installed on the side of my wrist. Then the nurse took one of those throwaway pink shavers and went to work clearing little circles all over my chest. "A skin specialist would charge you to get these moles removed," she said, a little apologetically, before rubbing the circles all over with some kind of pumice pad that helped the EKG receptors pick up the heart signals better.

Now she injected me with radioactive isotopes intended to make my heart show up better on the MRI machine, gave me one of those wraparound hospital gowns, and installed me in a chilled room to let the stuff work. Then I got the MRI (not too bad: I got to nap while the big boxes rotated slowly around me for about 15 minutes) and was sent off to the treadmill.

I got hooked up to a bunch of wires that led to a big box that was strapped to my lower back, and they sat me back down to monitor my heartbeat at rest. That wasn't too bad: I found that if I meditated and cleared my mind, I could get the rate down as far as 55 bpm. When they got my MD paged, he came in and watched while they put me on the treadmill and tried to get the rate up to 140. It took awhile to hit this point (I love to walk, used to run 5 miles earlier in life, in fact), and the MD watched the machine and started to look very bored. Finally I hit 138, which was good enough, and they hit the "record" button and made a print-out of a minute of heartbeats at full tilt.

"You're seeing me on Monday?" my MD asked. No, actually, I'm going to be looking at potential retirement homes that day; I'm seeing him the Monday following. "That's fine," he said quickly, adding, "I don't see anything here worth worrying about." So I got another dose of radioactivity through the IV, was unhooked from all the wires, and sent to the echogram room, where I got poked hard in every sensitive spot on my side and under my breast bone while they took ultrasound images, not of the baby I was carrying, but of various parts of my heart. (That wasn't bad either, other than the pokes: I got to watch the screen and see all my valves opening and closing, and every so often they'd turn on the sound, which was uncannily similar to a slightly overloaded washing machine.)

Finally, another nap time with the big boxes circling round and round. Then off came the bandages and the tape that held the sensors on, along with the IV in my wrist. "Now if you feel chest pain when you get home, be sure to let us know!" the nurse warned me. I was free to drive home, still in a dense internal fog, though by now it was 11 AM (too late for breakfast and too early for lunch at the hospital snack bar) and the sun was shining brightly.

Did I have chest pains? Of course I had chest pains! Everywhere I'd been poked and prodded and shaved and sliced and scrubbed with pumice and had hair ripped off with the tape and bandages ached for the rest of the day. With a big dose of Tylenol, though, I got a 2-hour nap that made me begin to feel slightly human.

Moral: don't grow old. Though the alternative is having your mom or wife leave your celbooks out for the trash along with your manga collection.

Next installment: Sensei finds out what the tests showed, and (assuming they were as boring as his MD seemed to think) takes the next step: scheduling the colonoscopy!

Lynxa · Post by **Lynxa** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 6:48 pm

Well at least you got it out of the way!!

A lot of men refuse to have checkups at all. Heck, my dad found out he was diabetic only because he went into diabetic shock at home, passed out, and had a seizure. And he STILL only went to the hospital because my stepmom made him!

Don't worry about colonoscopies (jeez I hope this isn't your first

) They're a doddle. But if they try to give you the red stuff punch them in the face. You want the purple or green stuff!

Three cheers for Sensei's health!!!

kittens · Post by **kittens** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:23 pm

Yap at least you checked up

Be healthy and be young!

iwakuralain16 · Post by **iwakuralain16** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:40 pm

colonoscopy?? that is going to be no good... when i worked in the hospital the endoscopy room was always so... smelly >_> I had to deliver drugs sometimes during procedures or refill thier pixis machines that they used to get their drugs from.

I am sure they will make you get a bowl prep kit or they will just make you get the golyte which i heard is a bitch to drink(i just dispensed it...). good luck @_@ i hope i never have to get one ~_~

ashenfairy · Post by **ashenfairy** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 9:42 pm

Good thing you're going in for check ups and seem pretty healthy! Because I don't know what I do if you started feeling so bad you wouldn't want to scan those lovely genga sets you have! Here's hope the consensus is as good as the outlook seems!

Krafty · Post by **Krafty** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 9:48 am

Health tests aren't exactly a barrel of laughs, so it's good of you to go through it all, Sensei.
Judging from what you've said, I'm sure the results will come up fine!

Cloud · Post by **Cloud** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 9:48 am

I think there might be a few exception.

glorff · Post by **glorff** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 1:04 pm

Growing old aint for sissies

I just went thru most of that fun last year, and I won't be doing it again soon. Physically I am in my mid thirties. I think that I can remember that long ago to know how to act

Snakeskii · Post by **Snakeskii** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 1:24 pm

*cringes* I hate medical exams...I would have to take a load of anti-anxiety meds to get through half of that!

I salute you for being so brave!

Baakay · Post by **Baakay** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 8:08 pm

Ahhh the colonoscopy.

Nate did that last year. "What's a colonoscopy, mom?" "Well... basically dad's going to have a camera inserted up his..." "HEY!!" (guess who that interjection was from.)

The good news: they gave him the "twilight sleep" medicine that leaves you wide awake and bushy-tailed, so to speak, and completely unable to remember a single thing about the experience after it's over. Weirdest thing ever, but at least he didn't mind the procedure.

I suppose my turn comes soon.

I hope there wasn't a specific reason they were MRI'ing you... aside from general precaution! I've only had them twice: once on my knee (which was broken, and they found that out earlier by pressing on it and hearing my one and only lifetime scream) ; and once in my 30's when they examined my head and found nothing.

Seriously.

Post by **sensei** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 6:26 am

Thanks, everyone, for good wishes of healthiness. I'm just back off the road again, in our continuing search for a Great Good Retirement Place. My wife, being older than me, has already retired, and we are scoping out spots for her to go set up shop with most of our stuff, while I finish out the rest of my stint at my job. I drove something like 550 miles over 36 hours, plus looked at a bunch of houses and communities, and things for once look hopeful. Now if I can be assured of living long enough ... Sensei looks longingly at the big stack of anime he'd never had the chance to watch...

The meeting with my MD is next Monday. I'll pass on the results then.

Baakay wrote: I hope there wasn't a specific reason they were MRI'ing you... aside from general precaution!

No, as I understand, it was a Thallium Stress Test. Thallium (best known as the chief ingredient in old-fashioned rat poison) is absorbed quickly by the heart, so they give you a small dose of a radioactive isotope of it. This allows the heart to show up more clearly on the MRI than usual. They do it once while you're at rest, flush it out, then put you on the treadmill

and do it again while your heart is beating fast. Then they compare the two images to see if there's any part that is starved for oxygen during exercise. It's a quick way to see if your coronaries are partially blocked.

They did an MRI of my head too about seven years ago, when I lost most of my hearing. They thought it might be a brain tumor, in which case the hearing loss might be reversable. Alas, just like Baakay, they found nothing.

Thanks again for the concern.

Cloud · Post by **Cloud** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 6:27 am

What made them think that?

Not Sir Phobos · Post by **Not Sir Phobos** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 8:21 am

OOOOoooooOOOOOOOoooo colonoscopy! I can't wait.

Sounds like you took it like a man. Good luck on the retirement home btw

Baakay · Post by **Baakay** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 10:15 am

Not Sir Phobos wrote:OOOOoooooOOOOOOOoooo colonoscopy! I can't wait.

Sounds like you took it like a man. Good luck on the retirement home btw

Given Perv-chan's temporary absence from all things internet while she moves, I feel it only right that I should point out

HOW MANY EXTREMELY WRONG WAYS THOSE TWO STATEMENTS COULD BE TAKEN!!

shellie · Post by **shellie** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:25 am

.....

Sorry. You lost me laughing back at the first line with "the good, the bad and the elderly."

(I think that's the PERFECT title for Clint to do a remake of the movie!

)

The health thing sounds positive, so now you just have to find a decent place to spend those growing-old years. Good luck to you and your wife!