CT Dread

I've had somewhat high cholesterol, ever since I took my first general diagnostic blood test that I can remember, maybe twenty years ago. It isn't get to an ER now or even at your earliest convenience high but it has always been above normal. During my last two general workups though, the last one being last week, that number had crept a couple notches higher.

My physician, technically an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner (ARNP) since my previous MD retired, just told me to lay off the Christmas cookies and sent me on my way with a clean bill of health and my second dose of the Shingles vaccine. My private MD, i.e. wife, on the other hand, has I guess you could say a vested interest in my health and asked me if I would agree to a CT Scan to check my calcium score. Evidently, that is doctorese for checking how much arterial plaque one has built up in their major arteries near their heart. 

Since I know my mom also had high cholesterol and I'm pretty sure my grandparents did too, I decided it might not be a bad thing to undergo a dose of radiation if it might mean prolonging my life in a healthy manner. So I agreed and the test was set up for Friday of last week. 

The test itself is pretty tame as far as tests go. I simply walk into a room, lay on the bed of the CT scanner and it slides me in and out of a tube for a few minutes while asking me to hold my breath here and there and then it was over. Honestly, it took more time for them to attach heart monitor leads to my torso and them rip them off, two of them taking chunks of chest hair, than it did for the test.

Leading up to the test and even after, I have been nervous about the results which they told me should take about a week to be processed. For some reason, knowing what percentage my arteries are blocked seems akin to knowing how long I have to live, something I don't have the foggiest idea of right now but might have a rough estimate once I got the results. Blogger Red over at Hiawatha House blog was also in my mind as he is now recovering from surgery since one of his arteries was 85% plugged before they found out. He was already starting to have symptoms that could eventually have lead to a stroke and death if they hadn't caught it and was fortunate. Was I going to be like that?

Maybe an hour after I got home, I got an email stating I had new test results to look at in my chart. Since I had been told it would take a week, I thought it was just computer speak for telling me that the test had been taken and the results would be in in the coming days but when I clicked on the link, it actually told me I had scored a big fat zero on my calcium score. I wasn't quite sure what that meant. Zero is generally a failing score after all. But when I read the summary notes section, I read they had found not a trace of any arterial blockage buildup anywhere in my system. My pipes were clear. What a huge relief that was to learn the news. I'll take a zero when it comes to arterial plaque any day!

This means I can have a couple Christmas cookies later tonight right, especially if I would have eaten 3 or 4 of them before being told to lay off the cookies? Isn't not as many the same as laying off?

Unbeknownst to me, they took pictures of me during the CT scan and included them in my chart so I thought I would include one for your curiosity.

A.I. Generated Photo and not a realistic portrayal of me... or is it?