Stress Test

So I had a little heart trouble.... the next step, according to doctors, is the stress test. As if having a heart attack isn’t stressful enough.

If you don’t know the test involves putting the patient (me) on a treadmill while hooked up to monitors. I don’t like hospitals and doctors very much but I was looking forward to this. I’ve never been on a treadmill before. It sounds like fun, don’t you think?

My parents had a neighbour who was having heart trouble. He was an older man. He went for his stress test and died on the treadmill. I supposed if you’re going to have a heart attack, the hospital is the best place to do it. But it might be better not to have the heart attack in the first place.... (was I going to get the same treadmill that had killed my parents’ neighbour? I resolved to look for notches on the side...)

It was a snowy day and because I’m cheap I parked about six blocks away so I didn’t have to pay for parking. I walked through the falling snow thinking “this is a warm up.”

The waiting area was like a convention of overweight middle-aged men. Oh, I should add “sweaty” too. I suppose we were all nervous. I was atypical- a little younger, a little thinner and no facial hair. Why did they all have facial hair?

This was a waiting room with no joy. No compulsive conversationalist, no small talk. We were all miserable and we didn’t even touch the magazines- which seemed to all be about healthy eating. I began to understand. There were cruel forces at work here. Who would work in such a place? I couldn’t stop thinking about the minions of Utgar. Manning the treadmill. Laughing as they turned it up faster and faster.

If the staff were Minions they were in disguise. Without exception they were overweight middle aged women. (which was partly why the waiting room was so sullen). I began to think about sinister forces again- disillusioned and bitter middle aged wives who came here to torture men in an attempt to exorcise their disappointment with their own lives...

I was shown into a little room. A cheerful lady (they were all so cheerful- it was spooky) told me take off my shirt and gave me a little hospital gown to cover myself with. Then she disappeared for ten minutes. Left alone in a tiny room, wearing a hospital gown, I began to get nervous. Thought about my parents’ neighbour. I don’t want to die, you know. I want to spend more time with my kids.

The cheerful lady comes in and has me take off the hospital gown. She has a razor and shaves a bunch of patches on my chest so the thingamajiggies get better contact. I apologize for being hairy- I’m not really that hairy. She just laughed. I said she’d probably never imagined herself shaving middle-aged mens chests every day. She just laughed. Creepy.

I’m next. I’m shown into another little room. The guy before me is just finishing up. He’s fatter than me but he looks extremely robust. He’s not wearing a hospital gown but is bare chested and is possibly the hairiest man I have ever seen. But he is quickly ushered out and I am installed in his place.

Many sensors are fitted on me, and some contraption around my waist. My family doctor has lost his license (he told fat people to lose weight and called smokers stupid and they complained and he lost his license) so they don’t know what to do with whatever amazing data they are about to find out.

The treadmill is huge, it fills most of the room and there is a little window you can look out while you’re treading. The view is just a blank wall opposite.

They are patient with me. I have never been on a treadmill before but it’s not that hard but they tell me I am doing it wrong. My steps are too long and I won’t be able to keep up when the going gets tough on the inclines. Inclines? They say the machines aren’t made for overweight middle-aged men with long legs.

The machine tilts and I’m walking up hill. It’s not too bad. But then it happens again, and again and again and I am struggling to walking up this mountain. They’re shouting at me not to let go and take smaller steps and do I feel okay? I’m fricking breathing so hard I can’t answer. I think they are trying to kill me. I imagine myself shooting out the little window and smashing into the brick wall and falling down, down, down....except the treadmill will shoot me in the other direction.

Then it’s done. They let me sit down and catch my breath. Is everything okay, I ask the lady in the white coat by the print out screen.

“It’s within the normal range.” That’s all they’ll tell me.

The door opens, and another frightened overweight middle-aged man with a partially saved chest is ushered in- my cue to leave.

I get dressed and pass through the waiting room of sullen silent faces. Take the elevator down to the main floor, head out the revolving door, back into the snow. There are little flakes floating down all around me. It’s great to be alive!