The Last of the Tests

On Monday I had an echo cardiogram of my heart. Basically, I got to see what my heart looks like while it's beating inside of me on a monitor next to the bed where I was laying. It was like an ultrasound, I'm told. I learned that my heart is much closer to the left side of my chest than I realized! For some reason, I always figured it was in the middle of my chest. Directly after the echo cardiogram, I was given a Holter heart monitor (see pictures below). I wore it for 24 hours, and the display counted down by minutes until the time when I could take it off. As I prepared my lunch that day, I snagged the cord on a drawer in the kitchen. A few minutes later I looked down and thought I'd broken the monitor because the display was blank. I rushed to the bathroom to check all the wires (there were five) and see if anything had come unplugged only to remember that my time was up at 11:51am, and the monitor had shut itself off. Whew! I also learned that white tabs that hook on heart monitors have extremely sticky adhesive (some of it is still stuck to me, and I have been scrubbing it faithfully) and hurt about ten times more than pulling off a band-aid when they are removed. Ouch! The hardest part was pushing the little yellow button on the monitor each time that I felt dizzy. The frequency of it made me feel helpless. On the positive side, I got my blood drawn Tuesday and consequently have now officially finished all medical tests that my primary doctor, neurologist, and cardiologist have ordered. Now I am moving on to follow-up doctor appointments! Yay!