On 3/24/2017 1:17 PM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 3/24/17 12:58 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 24 Mar 2017 10:55:40 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote:
I had a routine stress test done a few years ago and the
hospital charged the insurance company $14,000. Made me start thinking
about it.
My nuclear
stress test a few years ago was $4700.
I guess this was a more involved test than what I got.
They just had me hooked up to an EKG and had me go up and down a
little step box, right there in the office with the little blonde girl
who works for doc running the machine. It was just part of a wellness
physical.
It was essentially the same as the one I did at Georgetown in 1961-2
when they thought I had a heart murmur. (I was in a study)
I wish I had the tape from my test at 13 to compare to me at 70.
Mine was a colossal pain in the ass. First, I was injected with isotopes
and sat on a torture chair while some sort of radiation reading camera
whirled slowly around me. Then I was up on a treadmill until I was ready
to pass out, died, or completed the test. Then I rested for 30 minutes
and was back up on the chair with the whirling camera. To increase my
anxiety during the treadmill portion, the doc told me ( I was looking
out the window) that he was sure my mother in law was walking down the
medical campus.
Mine was similar except I laid on a table that transported the patient
into the Xray machine, similar to a MRI machine. Was told to lay
perfectly still while the x-ray thing moved all around taking pictures
from every possible angle. Took about 15 minutes to take all the pictures.
Then, they rolled me down to a room where a cardiologist was waiting.
I noticed a treadmill in the room but the doc said he was going to
inject something in my arm that would allow him to control my heart
rate. I looked again over at the treadmill and it's emergency off knob
about knee high and told him I'd rather do the treadmill. I didn't like
the idea of a doc artificially controlling how fast or burdened my heart
rate was because a guy I knew *died* in the middle of a stress test due
to a massive heart attack. I wanted to be in control, not the doc. He
agreed but warned me that if I didn't get my heart rate up to a certain
level the test results would not be as accurate. No problem. I huffed
and puffed and made sure I exceeded the heart rate he required. (I
think it was something like 160 BPM). Then, the injection of the
isotopes again and back into the machine for another 15 minute x-ray
session. Good news was that they found no blockages or obstructions.
Bad news was I had to give up high test coffee.