What to say, where to start? I’d like to forget and no doubt it’ll dim soon enough but even though my experience wasn’t positive maybe reading about it will help someone else. I know I was searching for info online leading up to it. For me it helps knowing what to expect even though I guess none of us will have the exact same process.

Last year I met with an endocrinologist after being diagnosed with diabetes t2. Along with ordering numerous tests she referred me to a cardiologist. Diabetes increases your risk of other conditions and vice versa. At the very end of last month I met the cardiologist and had an ecg and ultrasound that she didn’t find concerning. To complete the picture though she requested a heart ct with contrast dye. Given I have anxiety around all things medical my heart rate was very high when I saw her and that led to the ct prep…

Before fronting up for the scan I took four doses of a beta blocker over the weekend. I’m told this is fairly standard in an effort to bring your heart rate to a level that gives clearer imaging. A friend had one recently without any of what I went through though but tells me her heart rate is always low.

Felt a bit weird after the first two doses. Was that the effect on my heart, my system? or just anxious me? By the fourth though I was smiling and feeling a little chill…heart rate was at 70. I knew they wanted 60 and the cardiologist had said that if it wasn’t low enough on the day ‘they’ would just give me a little intravenously to ‘top it up’. I wasn’t worried at that point. I thought it would all be quite straight forward.

Hmmm

Some parts of that hospital have undergone amazing renovations in the last couple of years, modernisation. They obviously missed the heart clinic though which is found in the 19th century, at the end of a long corridor on the lowest (underground) floor. All the money on that level probably went into the massive donut machines. It’s a cold, soulless place – both the large, sparsley furnished prep and post room, and the people I came into contact with. I guess they see it everyday and are just trying to keep their schedule moving. Don’t engage – it’s only humans with a (dare I say) heart you’re dealing with!

I messed up the schedule that day. I should have been out before I was in. In the tubie that is. I was given three more tablets to bring my heart rate down and then, when it wasn’t in half an hour, taken in anyway and given more intravenously. It goes against everything in me that I don’t even know what I was given! I’m so med phobic I would never just take ‘something’…but I had to accept that I was in this state’s (maybe this country’s?) top heart facility and that these experts knew what they were doing. Something under the tongue, something in the arm and in and out of the tubie very quickly three times. Contrast dye for the last spin.

The actual test takes 5 minutes tops and is not scary, to me, at all. It’s the anticipation, all the drugs in my system, and now the waiting on results. I was told if there was anything terrible someone would ring me that day. The cardiologist I’m seeing doesn’t work that day so until close of business the next day I was waiting… I’m still not convinced until I do speak to her because I know at my age, weight etcetc, I’m bound to have some narrowing of the arteries, some plaque. Surely? I have a telehealth appointment with her – soonest was two weeks. Leave me hanging much?!

And the end of that story is that of course once I got home, and was calm again, my heart rate was 60 for several hours. The rest of that day, and the next were not my favourites. I don’t know how long it took to get the bucketload of meds out of my system. You can be sure I’ll be asking all that and more when I do speak to the great doctor.