**How can you care?** 'Because I choose to.' **You make it sound so simple.** 'That's because it is simple. Hard sometimes, but simple.'

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Got there about 15 minutes early, despite my pulling into the wrong parking lot twice (there's about a ton of little doctor's office around the hospital, and a complete lack of street numbers on most of them). Filled out the paperwork and waited.

Not too long afterwards, they call me in to put my pacemaker through it's paces. The nurse puts a ring with a magnet in it over the pacemaker so the computer can read it, then she jacks my heart rate up to 100 for several minutes, then she purposely mis-fires the leads a couple of times. "Oh, most people don't feel anything." Well, I am not most people, and feel the two misfires VERY much. Not so much as pain, as just a very weird sensation that goes from my chest to my throat.

When that bit of torture is finally done, I go back to the waiting room to wait for a room to come available. Then it's move into the room and wait some more. A young female nurse comes in to get the info for my chart, then takes my blood pressure. She gives me a weird look and says, "I'm not hearing this right, let me get someone else in here." So I wait, and eventually an older female nurse comes in and tries again. "Do you normally have low blood pressure? It's 95 over 60." I answer yes, so she goes out and the previous nurse comes back in, and it's time for an EKG. It takes longer to put all the stickies on than it does to do the test, then it's time to rip them all off again. (sigh)

More waiting, then a nurse comes and says the doctor wants a chest X-ray, too. So off to the X-ray room for a couple of those. Then back to the room to wait.

About 4pm (appointment was at 2:30) I see Dr. Baugh, and we chat, he says I look great, he picks a bit of suture that's sticking out of the mostly-healed incision, he says he'll see me in a year.

Thankfully, this all was considered a post-operative follow-up visit, so I didn't have to pay a thing. I'll be getting a schedule in the mail of when to have my pacemaker phone their system, and when to come in for more checks.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

*Hugs* Well, it sounds like it could have gone easier but at least it sounds like the outcome was a good one and that's what matters the most.

I remember the last time I got an EKG - presurgery for the port-a-cath. Some nurses were talking about computer problems outside of my little booth. I guess it sounded too much like work because my heart rate went up. LOL! The nurse doing the test made me lay there for a few minutes and fortunately the second one went a lot better (the nurses had wandered off to talk about their problems elsewhere). I still giggle about that.

Jeannie