Part 4: "Move, Sloth!"

Early the following morning, on Day 18, I was scheduled to partake in the time-honored Medical Care Establishment tradition referred to colloquially as a cardiac stress test. This is a procedure that involves being injected with a nuclear radiotracer and walking, or running, on a treadmill until either your target heart rate is achieved or you experience a heart attack or some other potentially fatal complication. I swear I am not making this up.

Of course, the preparation for my stress test began much earlier, at about 6pm the previous evening. It was at about that time that I swallowed the last morsel of my “dinner;” a few hours later, I was told that I couldn’t eat or drink anything until after the stress test. So there were no late-night snacks, no glass of water right before bed, and no wandering down to the refrigerator in the nurses’ station in the middle of the night and drinking straight from the orange juice container. It was a harrowing experience. Then, in the morning, the nurse returned and reminded me, with a smile on her face, that I couldn’t have anything to eat or drink until after the stress test. I mentioned that I was really thirsty and could I maybe, please, just have a small sip of water if I get it myself. She said she would go ask the doctor, but she hasn’t come back yet, even to this day, so I’m guessing not.

At about 8:30, or maybe at some other time – it was all an ethereal blur, the Transportation Department (motto: We built the hospital like a labyrinth on purpose.) came to transport me via wheel chair to the secret cardiac stress test location, buried deep within the bowels of the local Medical Care Establishment facility. The first step in this process was to have a very thorough and detailed picture taken of my heart. This involved laying on a bed that was about as comfortable as slab of concrete, only not as warm, and holding my arms above my head in a very casual, yet uncomfortable fashion. Then a mammoth “camera” swooped down and very nearly swallowed me whole. This took about 15 minutes.

After the camera finished digesting my heart, and it was my turn for the stressful part of the test, I was removed to an ante room for further preparation. At this point, the friendly personnel, with smiles on their faces, removed all of the EKG sticky pads and put on new sticky pads for a slightly different device called an ECG. ECG is a slightly different Latin phrase than EKG, but it means about the same thing. As alert readers of this blog will recall, an EKG is a device which medical care personnel attach to people to see if they have a high tolerance for hair removal pain. Under the right conditions, the ECG will also check to see if one’s heart is malfunctioning, although in a different way than the EKG. Then I was connected to all manner of wires and probes, including a large, thick one that made me think of umbilical cords. Finally, I was led to the chamber.

Inside the chamber were three doctors, and when I say three doctors, I really mean two doctors and one nurse. The nurse, of course, was smiling, and looked like she just desperately wanted to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies for me, if she could just find the time in between measuring my blood pressure. One of the doctors looked like he could be my little brother, and was just as nervous as I should have been, had I not been severely drugged. The other doctor was the one who was clearly in charge, and obviously had been since the Dark Ages. She was clearly a secret agent of the KGB, for she spoke with a foreign accent and had one of those Russian names that have about nine syllables, one vowel, and is pronounced, “Smith.”

Anyway, KGB doctor led me onto this platform, connected all of my wires and umbilical cords to her computer, and then pressed a large red button that was nearby. At about the same time, and quite coincidentally, I might add, the ground beneath me began to move and I was forced to walk in order to remain upright. It was then I perceived that I was on a treadmill. The KGB doctor explained that she was going to attempt to raise my heart rate to something like 169 beats per minute. “Or kill me,” I’m pretty sure she said, under her breath.

After several minutes of strolling on the treadmill and my heart rate not getting anywhere near the target, the KGB doctor exclaimed, “We just might be here all day!” Then she rubbed her hands together, laughed in a manner not unlike that undoubtedly demonstrated by Josef Stalin when he took over Eastern Europe, and pressed another large red button which was also nearby. At about that time, and quite coincidentally, I might add, I found the ground beneath me moving at A Very High Rate of Speed. And it became quite steep. For those readers of this blog familiar with my brother-in-law and my driveway (which are two things I’m not always able to use in the same sentence), imagine doing the Jeff Turner Death March up my driveway, for about five minutes.

Sidebar: it was at this point in the stress test that I thought of those words which are also the title of this post. It was originally a quote from the movie Ice Age, but is now a quote from my son. James, when once attempting to race upstairs to answer a call of nature, found his brother plodding up the stairs very slowly. After waiting patiently for several moments, he yelled these words. It was just about the funniest thing ever, though I dared not laugh in the presence of the KGB doctor.

Well, after five minutes of the driveway death march, I reached my target heart rate and the nervous doctor reached for my IV Harpoon of Death and injected a nuclear radiotracer. This was so they could get an effective “After” picture of my heart that they could compare with the one before. At this point, the KGB doctor mercifully stopped the treadmill and I collapsed in heap and very nearly passed out. Then they laid me on the concrete slab and took pictures of my heart again with the mammoth camera. After all this excitement, I was led back to my cell where I found a curiously delicious lunch waiting for me.

Oh, the stress test showed everything to be normal. No problems there. “He sure is an ornery one,” the doctors all thought, in unison.