More Heart Tests
April 25, 2007
Well, the good news came back today… My heart is completely healthy…
As detailed in previous posts, there is some heart disease that runs in my family. Both my Grandfather and Father passed away from heart attacks. My Dad was only 47. As I am not too far away from that at 43, I am quite conscious of the risk factors.
Last December, I had a Heart Save CT Scan done to check the amount of plaque in my heart. The results came back very positive, with a very minimal score.
A couple of months back, I began to experience some chest pains. I hesitate to say chest pains because that over dramatizes what was going on. It was really a tightness or heaviness in the chest area. At no time was there any pain. This was accompanied by quite dramatic gas, burping, belching, etc…
Being one to be quite aware of what I am most likely facing at some point in my life, I dutifully went to the doctor with my symptoms. He didn’t believe it had anything to do with my heart, but never the less ran some blood tests and even did an ECG to check my heart. Everything came back positive. He had me get on a Prilosec OTC regimen to see if it was acid related. That medicine seemed to have no effect.
At my urging, he referred me to a Cardiologist just to see if he was missing something. At my first visit with him, his instinct and judgment, based on data, was that whatever the issue was, it most likely was not related to my heart. After some consultation with me, we decided to do a treadmill stress test, just to be sure. I had done one of those about ten years ago, again just to check out my condition and passed with flying colors.
I again passed this stress test but my “condition” had not really improved. We talked about how deterministic this particular stress test was and decided, given my family history, to go a bit more in depth. This meant a nuclear stress test. Oooohhh… what a fancy term, nuclear stress test.
Well, I had that test done last week. What it really means, is that they injected me with a small dose radioactive substance to measure my blood flow and heart pumping performance. After injection, they took a whole bunch of pictures of my heart and chest area at rest to get a baseline. Then, I again got back on the treadmill and got my heart rate way up high. They immediately took another series of images to see if there was any blood flow blockages or other issues. These tests were a pain in the ass, as they took almost 3 hours with most of the time sitting in a waiting room.
Anyways, I got my test results today. You always have to wonder when the doctor says “Let’s start with the good news…”. However, the good news was all that there was. The test were very conclusive that there was nothing wrong with my heart. I passed the test with flying colors again. According to the Cardiologist, there is no signs whatsoever of coronary heart disease. In fact, he was quite impressed with how I did on all the stress tests. Of course, these tests are not all inclusive and other issues could be hidden.
His best guess (not sure that’s the right term 
) as to my problem is something acid reflux related. He was a bit surprised when I told him that I had take Prilosec OTC with minimal benefit. It’s back to the primary care physician to plot the next course on this issue.
The bottom line is that my proactive heart assessments keep coming back positive. This is great news given my family history. I will continue to be aggressive in monitoring my heart health as I age. My Cardiologist did mention that they have a brand new imaging system coming online in the next month or so that will revolutionize how they can look at potential future heart issues. We will get back together in 6 months or so and evaluate whether we want to do one of those tests.
With a bit of afterthought, I must be getting old. I now have a primary care physician, a Rheumatologist, a Cardiologist, and an Ophthalmologist. Dang, getting old sucks. I have an appointment with my Ophthalmologist at the end of May, where I expect to start wearing glasses. Where did the times go…. 
Elliptical Trainer Saga Continues and 300
March 30, 2007
Unfortunately, our saga with our new elliptical trainer continues. The A/C power converter arrived on Friday and Suzanne spent about 2 hours with the support folks trying to the elliptical trainer to work.
When the converter was attached and the system plugged in, nothing happened. They had Suzanne switch a connector between the electronics “head” and the base unit thinking it was plugged in backwards. Turns out that it was, but we switched many times earlier trying to get it to work. If you ask me, it’s a stupid design that the connectors aren’t keyed such that it can only be plugged on one way. It’s common practice in electronics these days.
Anyways, with that change the electronics unit powered up, but still didn’t function. The lights/digits/etc lit up but it they wouldn’t count down or change or do anything. At this point, the support folks suspect some other kind of switch in the back end. They had Suzanne start taking it apart to check out a few things, but it wasn’t easy for her.
The end result Friday was that they are shipping us a new one of these switches and also sending out a technician to check this thing out at the same time. It won’t cost us a thing. I would say they have been pretty helpful and all, but it’s still frustrating to purchase an expensive piece of equipment and have these issues.
Today, the family also ventured into Tucson to catch a movie and a dinner. I don’t think I have been to the theater in 3+ years. I don’t really enjoy the theater and would much, much rather watch a movie at home on my theater system. Savannah wanted to see Bridge to Terabithia and Sean wanted to see 300, so Suzanne and I split up. I was not anxious to see this movie as I am a fan of the original 1962 film, The 300 Spartans.
The film was very underwhelming. It was watchable, but not much more. They took a lot of liberty with history and made the movie more like a video game than a feature film. The constant and incessant flying of blood all over the place was a huge distraction from the movie. There was more blood than a gory video game. The director seemed fixated on lopping off heads too – another distraction. And I didn’t see the need for the inclusion of non-human, monster characters on the Persian side.
The movie did have some strong points as the interaction of Leonidas and his Queen was very good and built nicely through the story. With some of the character development, history and storyline, the movie had a chance to be quite good. However, the fantasy aspects and uneeded gore, were heavy detractors for me. Sean felt very similar as to me. He kept asking “Why did they make some of them non-human?”.
At least the original, excellent movie The 300 Spartans is on its way from Blockbuster for us to watch one evening next week.
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