• Good heart, bad heartburn

    Good news people!

    Come on, how often to you hear those words come from my lips? I’m the human downer. Women shield their children’s eyes and run screaming the other way when they see me coming.

    That’s a true story by the way (no it isn’t).

    This morning, minutes before I typed this in fact (but after I called Cheryl – can’t have the wife thinking I love my blog more than her), I learned my echocardiogram was normal. You combine that with the results of my stress/nuclear medicine test and it seems my heart is healthy and strong.

    It does make the chronic heartburn a more likely candidate, but I chew up GERD and spit it out like spoiled milk.

    Ugh, that simile was a huge mistake. I think I may have nightmares. Excuse me, I think I’ll go verify a few expiration dates.

  • New in town

    A new restaurant in town is creating a lot of buzz.

    IHOP.

    That’s right friends, the International House of Pancakes. The one and only.

    No, that’s not quite true. There’s already one 6 miles down the road. There has been for a LONG time. But of course, new is always better in the land of plenty. Except it’s not. It’s just a new wrapper for the same stuff.

    So picture me puzzled. Why on Earth is IHOP suddenly hot? The last time I thought about IHOP – which was a LONG time ago – I saw it as a place people went to nurse their hangovers. Hell, Cheryl hadn’t been to an IHOP since she made a hasty retreat with a young Beth after another customer got really upset about a dirty fork and punched the waitress in the face.

    I might have stuck around for the conclusion. (I hate cliffhangers.) But Cheryl had the good sense to rush Beth out of the building like a Secret Service detail. She didn’t stick around long enough to see if the customer sold her opinions a la carte.

    That’s my idea of an IHOP experience.

    So again I ask you, why?

    Naturally my mom wanted to go, so we went Saturday evening.

    Nobody got punched in the face and no one looked hungover, so it wasn’t so bad after all. I had the pancakes. How can you not?

  • News from the front

    As some of you may know, yesterday was my nuclear enhanced stress test and echocardiogram – or what will forevermore be known as, “the day my legs died.”

    From a layman’s perspective, it seemed my heart was working even though I’m in terrible shape, My legs were killing me as I kept going and going on the damn treadmill, waiting for my heart rate to reach the target zone.

    “Ok John, in ten seconds I’m raising the incline and speed again so be ready.”

    “Ok John, you’re holding steady at 140. We need to get to at least 153.”

    “His blood pressure is still good doctor.”

    “Ok John, we’re going to dial it up again….”

    Oh please God, NO!

    I’ve known for years I’ve been cursed with exceptional lung capacity (even though the pipes swell up occasionally). I don’t know if this had anything to do with my ordeal yesterday, but I lived. I got a call from one of the doctors that the results came back negative – good blood flow through all the arteries and vessels.

    Now I have to wait on the results of the echo – probably until Monday.

    I’m encouraged though. One down, one to go.