Testing my stress

Today I was told I was young, fit and healthy. I want to adopt the woman who said it!

Why was I told this? Because I had a stress test today. I had three women working on me like the fairies from Sleeping Beauty. I felt well cared for as they attached doll-sized jumper cables to my body to measure my heart. I saw my heart on the sonogram machine and I had a mini-out-of-body experience as if I had been here before. Well its cause I have, but the heartbeat I was seeing was my own this time, not my baby's. It is so cool to actually see that workhorse doing its job...fascinating. So once we got a looksie at my heart at rest, I then had to get it revved up to look at it on the other side of rest...which the doctor's like to call stress.

This stress test involves walking on a treadmill as it gradually gets steeper and faster. Here is where I witnessed a phenomenon that I knew in concept but hadn't really witnessed. The concept is that the younger and healthier you are, the harder it is to stress your hear out...and I learned that the hard way. On this treadmill they want you to go from a resting heart rate which I think I saw the number 26 to the number 80. So, I'm chugging along trying to impress them...

sidenote: You're not able to wear a jog bra because they need access to your heart (which happens to lie beneath your boobs) and so on the treadmill I'm trying to impress while also feeling really uncomfortable in the boobage area.

My heart rate was VERY SLOW going up and so I ended up having to go 5 iterations of incline and speed increase and still had to hold a fast run for a bit before it hit 80. Then funny, the nice fairies become more like a pit crew at that point because you have to SPEEDY FAST get on the table and stick the sonogram in the boobage area to witness the heart 'under stress'. I was all sweaty and breathing heavy and just a general mess but...we got what we came for. I felt the whole thing was fascinating and comical at the same time...and I have to say, if I can live in that space (fascinating and comical) for most of my life...I will feel fulfilled and less stressed. I believe that is why with most things, I see the twisted spin.

On that "twisted spin" note...I told the fairies that I could really make the whole thing go a lot quicker if they could get me into some catastrophic anxiety feelings...like maybe, that H1N1 shots give you cancer "on the spot"...that would work!

So my lesson today is healthy hearts take time and energy to stress out. So I intend to keep my heart healthy and to avoid the stress ...life is less sweaty and messy that way...and by golly, harness the boobs when running!