I just had a Thalium-imaging stress test. Ask Me Anything!

[benburch]

[La Lioness Priyanka]

1. what is that?

[benburch]

4. They run you on a treadmill...

til you are ready to drop, and when your heart rate reaches the magic number they compute, they inject you with thalium and you then run another sixty seconds.

The heart muscle takes up the thalium in proportion to how much oxygen it was taking in during the stress.

Then they put you in a scanning machine that takes about 20 minutes to scan your heart wile you are hooked up to an EKG so they can take data only when the heart is holding still.

Except in my case they had to run the scan three times because the EKG probe pad wasn't working right and they eventually replaced it.

Later they will combine all the data in the computer to get an image of the heart for diagnostic use.

[benburch]

7. Oh yes...

And I have to go in Monday for more imaging to complete the test.

[BigMcLargehuge]

2. did they find any thalium in their images?

[benburch]

5. I hope so!

That being the point.

[Mutley]

3. Did it hurt?

[benburch]

6. The worst part...

Was laying flat and absolutely still in the scanning machine for about 50 minutes...

You lay on a rail with no lumbar support and my back was killing me!

Usually it would only be about 20 minute in the machine, but they kept having to restart it.