No news is good news, right?

Yesterday I called the heart clinic to which my insurance referred me so that I could make an appointment to have my ticker evaluated. To my surprise, they had openings this morning. I dropped the kids off at school and headed to the doctor's office.

My fellow waiting room-ers were all well over the age of 70. I chatted with them while we waited. They all assumed I was there with/for my parents. hee!

After filling out the equivalent of a book or two of paperwork - seriously - why do they keep asking the same questions over and over on different forms? Annoying. It's almost as bad as closing a mortgage up in there.  But after I finished filling out forms, they processed me (read: entered my info into the computer. I hope they had to type my name, address, and insurance information as many times as I had to write it) and took me back to the exam room.

In the exam room, there was an ultrasound machine, a bed, and a treadmill and other assorted things that didn't register with me because, well, it didn't look important. I would not make a good partner for Jason Bourne today, that's for damn sure. I made a crack to the technician about borrowing the treadmill when we finished since I was at this appointment instead of being at the gym. She was was not amused.

"Get undressed from the waist up and put on this gown (more like a vest, actually) with the opening in the front."

Umm, okay. I guess we are doing this together then.

I hesitated for a second and she asked tiredly, "do you want me to leave the room? I can leave if you aren't comfortable."

Lemme think about this for a second.....
 1) the vest will be opening in front, so she's going to see everything anyway - and it's not like my chest is dipped in gold.
 2) the blinds are open, so anyone strolling around outside could see in if they really wanted to whether or not I'm in this room alone.
 3) time is money, people. Well, okay, not so much for me - but definitely for them.
 4) to be the size I am, I'm pretty comfortable in my own skin, and pretty comfortable with being uncovered as long as it doesn't involve jumping or jiggling my fat around for the mirth of others - so it's not going to bother me to undress around someone especially after some of my German life experiences. (Read about a really good one here.)
 5) I'm pretty doggone confident I don't have anything that she hasn't already seen before like 20,000 times.

"No, it's okay."

And I stripped from the waist up, put on the vest, and hopped onto the bed.

Once on the bed, she had me turn onto my left side with my left arm sticking straight out in front of me. Then she took my blood pressure - putting the cuff around my left arm. Just a guess, but I'm thinking since my body weight was bearing down on my left arm that it might make the reading high. Indeed, it was high. She didn't seem the least bit concerned. Neither my heart or brain exploded, which was awesome, but since I was in a heart specialty office within a hospital, I felt pretty confident someone close by could help if something was majorly wrong. At the very least, someone in the office should know CPR, right?

So began the echo doppler ultrasound. Gotta say, it was seriously cool even though I had no idea at all what I was looking at. I got to hear the blood flowing through the different chambers of my heart and I could actually hear the heart murmur. Or what I thought was the heart murmur. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, though. The echo ultrasound only took about 20 minutes start to finish. It was totally worth having to lie half naked on a table by a window with open blinds in a hunched but also slightly twisted position. Next time I have one of these, I'm totally wearing pasties with tassles, just for fun.

This afternoon, the doctor's office called - twice - wanting information for my primary care manager's (aka regular doctor's) office so they could send the results over. That worried me a little, but no one called and told me to report ASAP to the hospital or other medical facility, so I figure no news is good news.