I failed my stress test.

I have high cholesterol.  That’s part of being Jewish.  Along with the rye bread and pastrami.  I didn’t think that much about it, but my doctor was flipped.  Actually, my doctor is flipped.  He was such an asshole, I wanted to switch, but then he went to psychotherapy, went off insurance and now gives concierge service…  Sometimes I have to throw HIM off the phone.

He sent me for this test.  You ride through this big O.  And speaking of O’s, that’s what I got, a big fat zero, I aced the test, I had no plaque in my arteries.  But that was back in 1999.

He asked if I’d see a nutritionist.  To combat my over 300 cholesterol.  Sure, I don’t know anything about food.  My triglycerides got better, but I still blew that high number…  So finally, he put his foot down, he insisted I go on a statin.  I took Lipitor.

But Lipitor raised this muscle enzyme.  Which troubled him.

So I switched to Zocor, which didn’t work nearly as well.

And then he wanted me to go on Vytorin, which Blue Cross wouldn’t approve, but finally did.  And the drug worked oh-so-well. But then the newspaper was riddled with bad stories, how its maker fudged the test results, how some test results were negative!

And I don’t like bad news.  But I had to go for a blood test, for this kidney scan (I’m fine, but prone to stones), and since I paid $200 for the damn test, now that he’s at concierge level, my doctor charges a fortune, I wanted an interpretation of the numbers.  So when I was seeing the nutritionist not quite a month ago, I asked if he’d be around when I was done.  Turns out he wouldn’t be, but he’d come get me during my session.

So, he’s going on and on.  Which is making me uptight, because I’m paying for the nutritionist session…  Giving me every last detail re my kidneys and the anti-inflammatories I take, and then I asked him about the Vytorin.  He said the true results wouldn’t be in for a couple of years.  He thought I should stay on the drug.  But, if I wanted to see the heart guy…  Did I want to see the heart guy?  He’s on the plan…

Well…

When I got back to the nutritionist, she told me her husband had had a freak-out, and had gone to see Dr. ___.  She rolled her eyes and said he was a bit weird.  But that her hubby had had the stress test and was fine.

So I expected one of those cold number crunching dr.’s.

Yes, I made an appointment.  Why not?  I’ve reached my TWO THOUSAND DOLLAR DEDUCTIBLE!

I’m embarrassed.  What am I doing there, wasting this guy’s time.  Who turned out to be incredibly voluble, so full of information that I was afraid to interrupt him.

He wanted to know my history, operations, etc.

You get so old you forget your history, you don’t want to remember surgeries.  I didn’t think this would be part of the visit.  I’m scratching my head like a dolt.  And when we’re all done, he sends me in for an EKG.

But first, he starts checking my body.  There’s some blockage in my ankles…  How the hell can he feel that?

Do my calves hurt when I hike?

Well, yeah.

But it turns out they have to hurt WHILE you hike, not after, so it’s not that big a deal…  Or is it?

Then the tech puts stickers all over my chest, runs the EKG and I’m done.

But I’m not.  The doctor wants to run a stress test.  He says it should be mandatory after 50.  Like a colonoscopy.

Can I pee first?

And I’m standing in the bathroom, half-freaked, but thinking what a great story this is.  My anxiety dealing with the health care system, my mortality, how I walked up to the line, freaked out about my health, but was okay.  How I was scared straight.

The nurse shaved my tits to put on electrodes.  She strapped a battery pack to my abdomen.  I got on the treadmill, which got faster and steeper, and I’m doing so well, and then the doctor, running the test himself, which gives me confidence, tells me we’re done.

I’ve got to sit there and calm down, the machine is still taking stats.  And when I’m just about normal, this doctor turns around and tells me the test was abnormal.

As in YOU FUCKED UP AND WE’VE GOT TO DO IT AGAIN?

Shit, I didn’t get it until we went back to his office where he put it to me straight…  I failed the stress test.  He said nobody likes to hear that they failed their stress test.

Well, yeah!

I’m starting to reel while it sinks in.

He’s got to inject me with dye, take some pictures, look for blockage.  If it’s at the bottom of my heart, I will be fine.  If it’s near the top…

He doesn’t think I need a bypass, based on how well I tolerated the stress test physically, but if he sees something in the next test, we’re going to have to do an angiogram.

Huh?

I need to take a baby aspirin…  And DON’T DO ANY EXERCISE!

Suddenly, it occurs to me.  This guy’s afraid I’m going to go home and have a heart attack.  He wants me to lay low until we can do the next test, which is going to be DAYS AWAY!

Are you fucking kidding me?

I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it NOW!

Finally, they squeezed me in the following day, Tuesday, yesterday.

I had to wake up at 7:15 and finish eating breakfast by 7:30.  And then not eat anything again until four, after they’d taken pictures in the morning and the afternoon.

I haven’t gotten up at that hour since I went to high school.

Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep.

Hell, I couldn’t function.

My life is going to be changed forever.  I’m going to be taking pills, afraid to fuck…  How did this happen?  I thought I was taking CARE OF MYSELF!

So I show up at 9:30 and everybody’s so breezy, they want to bullshit.  I DON’T WANT TO BULLSHIT!  I’M GONNA DIE!

Turns out I’ve got to get on that fucking treadmill once again.  And they’re cracking jokes and I’m wincing…  This may be de rigueur to you, but this is my one and only life.  Who cares about P2P theft, who cares about oil prices, who cares about the war in Georgia IF YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!  I was truly confronted with my mortality.  For the first time in my life I realized this is how it happened.  You were fine until you weren’t.  Then, you were erased from this planet and new, ignorant world-beaters replaced you, not realizing they too someday would die.  Like my dad.  And Felice’s dad.  At 70.  ONLY FIFTEEN YEARS AWAY!

If I get that far.

The tech taking the pictures wanted to discuss Guns N’ Roses.  Was the new album coming out this year?

I grunted.

I went back in the afternoon for the final pictures.

I ate something.

And continued to be non-functional.  Suddenly, all that mattered so much didn’t matter anymore.

They said I probably wouldn’t find out the results until five o’clock today.  I woke up to a phone message, but it was some magazine looking for a quote on the Jonas Brothers…  Were they billion dollar babies?  That’s what they needed to know, Miley made a billion…  I’m trying not to yell.  No one in the music business has made a billion off one album, that’s a fictitious figure, counting in the "Hannah" TV show and…  Who gives a fuck.

Then the plumber called.

Then the phone rang again.

There was a fifteen percent chance the initial test was wrong, that it was a false positive.  You’ve got to be quite an optimist to consider those good odds.  And I’m not.

I’m sweating it out, fearful I’m going to die in my house, and I pick up the receiver and it’s the same woman who ran the test yesterday, the doctor’s nurse.  The test was normal.  I’m fine!

I’m still in shock.  Bad things happen to good people every fucking day.  I feel like Cat Stevens, pledging my life to God from here on.

The clouds have parted, I see clear skies and fifteen inches of powder in Vail’s back bowls.

But yesterday, I was THIS CLOSE to the Grim Reaper.