I honestly think it is the host I like to listen to. His name is Peter Barakan, and his voice is so darn soothing. I won't necessarily recommend these videos to you, but if you are ever bored, you can always learn the history of ramen noodles!
2) I took my stress test last week. It wasn't a fun thing. I was referred to a cardiologist after the panic attack I had at the doc-in-the-box to "ease my mind." I'm actually really embarrassed that I freaked out so hard that I was sent to a doctor. To be honest, though, it probably didn't hurt that I went, what with my family's history of heart problems, but still... I actually had two visits. My initial visit was to have an EKG and talk to the doctor. I did find out that my blood pressure is higher than it should be, which I think that has a lot to do with the weight I've gained, but the EKG was normal.
The doctor is Indian, and his accent is so heavy that I couldn't understand anything he said to me. I felt bad, because I usually do really well with accents, but his just baffled me. He had me on a table listening to me with his stethoscope, and he said something I couldn't understand. I just stared at him, hoping his meaning would kind of seep in, and he wound up repeating himself. I still didn't get it, so he held up his hand and said it again. So I held up my hand, thinking he was asking me to do that so he could hear something better (imagine how someone holds up their hand while swearing on the bible) and he looked at me really strangely and said very slowly and carefully "I said Breathe Normally." I felt like an idiot, but to be fair, that is really not what it sounded like he said. *shame*
I thought that would be all I had to do, but they said I also had to do a sort of pared down stress test. I was ok with that, since I figured it was just walking on a treadmill. I do that all the time! So I showed up the day they told me to and immediately had to strip down to my waist and put on a hospital gown. I wasn't expecting that, since I was told to just wear a comfortable, two piece outfit. Then I was lead to a room where a man gave me an I.V. I had actually been told I wouldn't be given drugs, but not told that I'd be given some kind of dye, so I hadn't been expecting needles! He didn't have much trouble getting the needle in, but when I looked back at my arm, I was covered in blood. I don't know what happened, since I had my eyes closed, but I had to be mopped up. Gross. Then I was taken into this very cold room with a treadmill in it. The nurse who came to administer the test was actually really, very nice. She must have seen I was nervous, so she kept me talking while she wired me up. That nurse got REAL familiar with my left boob. Real familiar, y'all. Once I was all hooked up, I had to walk. It wasn't bad at first, or at least not as bad as I'd thought it would be. The only thing is that she kept talking to me, which was distracting. She made me told on to the bar, and she kept ramping the machine up until I was running. The thing was inclined so high that I felt like Batman scaling a wall.
Like So.
I have a whole new appreciation of sports bras now. After this, I thought I was done, but they sent me into a waiting room with a bunch of other people (similarly topless underneath hospital gowns which were not all cinched as closely as my own. Yeesh.) I have no idea how long I sat in there, but it was long enough to watch Meredith Veira (?), The View, and part of Kelly and Michael. I'm not sure if that was part of some kind of endurance test or mindless torture, but that was the hardest part of the whole day. I would have rather been running at a 90 degree angle with no sports bra again. Next they took me in for an electrocardiogram, which was fine and normal, and then I was put into some kind of CAT scan machine and I had to lie still for 15 minutes while the thing rotated all around me. I wasn't told what was being done to me at that point, so I just assumed I was being pumped full of gamma radiation for hulking-out purposes. After that, the X-Ray man/Gamma radiation tech pulled the IV out of my arm. I have no idea what he did when he pulled it out, but my blood actually shot all over the wall. Not from my arm (I don't think my blood pressure was that high) but from the thing he pulled out of my arm. I had no idea how to react to that, so I just sat and stared at it until he told me to go. Again, gross.
Turns out my test results were normal, which I figured they would be, but hooray just the same. I've been told to lose weight and hopefully I will never have to do any of those heart things again. Fingers crossed for both of those things, please!
3) I still have no idea how to deal with my hair. It won't do anything I tell it to! I've decided it makes me look like the perkiest counselor at a summer camp from hell. That seems very specific, but very apt. I can't explain it.
4) The other day I pulled out the hand vacuum and was trying to clean up a very messy mess. It didn't seem to be working, even though I could see that stuff was being sucked up into the thing, but I didn't seem to be making much headway getting stuff off the floor. I thought for a moment that I'd broken the machine, but it turned out that the latch on the canister was open, and I was just redistributing the stuff I was cleaning up all over the room. This is why I don't clean more often.
