I had an EKG done and wore the holter for 24 hours. (The holter is sort of a portable recorder that you wear strapped to your waist connected to electrodes which are attached to your body. It monitors your heart activity for the 24 hour period). It is a pain in the ass (not literally!) especially sleeping.
Next I had to go for a CT Scan. This was quite an experience as well. You lie very still in a circular tube (we've all seen this on TV). They attach an IV and through it they inject die into your veins and take images of the heart and chest area. The hardest part is lying still for about an hour while they take shot after shot. Also the noise of the magnets circling is really quite loud. Very strange, but kind of neat is the warm rush of the die as it shoots through your system.
After that test, I'm starting to think that this could actually be serious stuff. I really started to panic when, the CT scan was on a Friday afternoon and on Monday morning I heard from Dr. Wolfe who said he'd scheduled an MRI for this upcoming Friday. Now, this is Canada. We constantly hear media reports about the troubles in our "free" health care system and about how people are on waiting lists for six months to a year to get an MRI. What was going on here with me? I thought to myself that either Dr. Wolfe has really good contacts, or I was really seriously ill. Anyway, I canceled the music gig I had in Toronto for Friday night (what's turned out to be the first of many gigs I've had to cancel since this whole thing started). I made it through the week and went down to The Toronto General Hospital at 4:30 that Friday afternoon for the MRI.
The MRI was very similar to the CT scan. However unlike the CT where the circular tube shifts positions up and down your body, with the MRI the flat board you lie on moves in and out of a full body length tube. I think the MRI shows more three dimensional detail than the CT. Apparently they needed to see my aorta from an angle that the CT couldn't get at - or I think they saw some kind of bump that they couldn't identify and wanted to get another look at it. Again the nurses and doctors were great and the worst part was lying still for so long in a very small space. I am slightly claustrophobic and they would slide me in an out of the tube whenever they could to relieve the panic that would set in after a while in that tube. This time they put sound deadening headphones on my ears because the noise of the circling magnets is so loud. It was silly though, because when they talked to me, I could barely hear them!
I got out of there after about an hour and a half and it was already a dark fall eve. I phoned Dory and told her that I was OK. Then I got right on that Gardiner Expressway and headed out of downtown Toronto. I hit the road in rush hour for a two hour drive to our weekend escape home in Niagara-On-The-Lake. It felt so good and free to be out of that tube. I am so lucky that we have our little magic cottage to run to. It would help take my mind off the worry about why I needed the stupid MRI in the first place. Isn't that for people that are really sick? Much ado about nothing. So thought I.
Part 3 - More Tests /
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