So I had a scare last week…

The wife and I were walking through Sam’s Club, doing some shopping, when I started to feel a little flush.  I figured it was just the heat, so I toughed it out.  A little later I started feeling clammy and cold… then dizzy.  I told her that we had to leave.  She said she would pay for the stuff and wanted me to go out and sit in the car.  The rest of the day I was wiped out and exhausted, not able to do much more than watch TV.

The next day I went into the doctor, who did some tests, took some blood, ran an EKG and sent me home letting me know that if she found anything they would call me.  OK… that’s was fine.

The next morning I am at work, still feeling a little tired from the ordeal, when I get a call from my doctor’s office at 9:45 am.   They were calling to inform me that they had scheduled an appointment for with with a Cardiologist and the appointment was at 11am… in just over an hour.

Well… needless to say, this had me a little on the worried side…  When it normally takes a few days to get into see a doctor, the idea that they got me in that fast, and to see a specialist, was incredible.

So, with butterflies-a-fluttering, I went to the Heart Center here in Bako.  I did have to wait for a little bit, but when I went in, they did some more tests and put me on a “halter monitor” that would record my heart for the next twenty-four hours.  They also set me up with an appointment to do a stress test and a Echo Cardiogram.

So two worrisome days went by while I waited for the day to take my tests…  and then I went in.  The tests were pretty easy and the stress test, which should also be called the “lets see how out of shape you are” test, went pretty well.  It is a test where you walk on a treadmill until your heart gets to a certain rate, then they inject you with a radio-isotope that makes your heart more visible to their scanner.

In the end, it turns out that there was nothing wrong with my heart.  In fact, I was told that for a person with my weight issues, that I have a very healthy heart.  I was, however, advised that I need to lose some weight… quite a bit, in fact.

Coming away from this, I will take it as a “shot across the bow”, so to say.  A warning that I need to shape up and get my act together.  Who knows?  The next time I might not be so lucky as to have a little bit of exhaustion and it might just be the real deal.