Burning EKG Daylight

I must break . . . out in SONG!

Yesterday, as part of my pre-op checkboxes, my doctor had me do some lab work and then get an EKG.  I’ve never had an EKG, and I assumed I’d be on one of those treadmill things, strapped with a couple dozen electrode-thingies, forced to run on an increasing incline at faster rates much like Ivan Drago did in Rocky IV.

Kaiser’s lab opens at 7:30am, so I headed off from my house a little before 7:00am.  I was the third or fourth in, and took #6 from the “Wait-UR-Damn-Turn-inator”.  When 7:30 rolled up, the lab check-in process started rolling and I was quickly in a seat, having my blood drawn by an expert phlebotomist.  Almost no pain at all, which I always appreciate and thank!

Then it was up to the fourth floor for the EKG.  I was the second one into the waiting room, and that window didn’t open for check-in until 8:00am, so I had a short ten minute wait.  This is almost never a real problem for me, as I’m always carrying my Kindle with two or three books that I haven’t read, and a slew that I’d be willing to read again. 

Unfortunately, as the receptionist told me, they don’t start doing the EKG until 8:45am.  Well, this is what I’m doing this morning, so that’s what I did.  I settled in to read for the next hour, tearing through the last third of Nick Cole’s The World as We Knew It and then started into Eric Lahti’s Saxton: Yee Naaldlooshii.  The lab tech for the EKG collected me around 9:10am, and we took a short walk down the hall.

EKG tests get your heart going!

“You can set your stuff there,” she told me, and gestured to a chair.  I deposited my messenger bag and sunglasses.

“Lay down and pull up your shirt.”

What’s this?  No disrobing and putting on a hospital gown?  No treadmill set to 95 degree?

The tech put six or so sticky-pads on my chest and attached cords to each one.

“Lay still and breathe normally,” she said.

I did so.  Or at least as much as you can in a cold hospital lying on an uncomfortable bed-thing with my feet hanging a good foot off the end.

“That’s it,” she said a moment later.

Seriously, like thirty seconds.  It took more time for her to take the pads and cords off of me than for the actual test.

I hope I passed!