Heart-Skip

With his cold stethescope against my chest he hears it, "Ga-gong, ga-gong, ga-gong." Puzzled, he turns to me and says, "Now I'll place this on your back and I'd like you to take two deep breaths every time I move it around."

"Ok...," I thought. But then suddenly, I realize something was up (and it's never a good thing at the doctor's office). "No one has ever taken this long before," I said to myself.

As he removed the earpierce passed his grayish-white hair he asked, "Has anyone ever told you, you had an irregular heartbeat?"

"Uh...no," I said confused.

He gets the stethescope, places it in my ears and tells me to listen closely for 15 seconds. One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand...It felt like forever.

"Ga-gong, ga-gong, ga-gong...skip...ga-gong, ga-gong, ga-gong...skip," I heard. A slight shift in sound, but it was there and I was completely clueless to it ever being there this whole time. After all these doctors examined me and told me I was perfectly normal, this one took just a few more seconds of his time to tell me otherwise.

I left the clinic stunned at the thought of needing to get a second opinion. I figured I'll make the appointment, get my usual result, and put this all behind me. Well, until today.

I sat on the patient's table, impatiently. Crunching the tissue paper with every anxious move I make. The nurse comes in and checks my vital signs. She takes my wrist and says, "Ok, now for your pulse."

She starts her stop watch.

"Wait," she says. "This doesn't seem right," she continued.

She restarts her stop watch.

Her facial expression changes. She writes some notes on her hand. "Did you know you have an irregular pulse?" she asks casually.

"Ugh, stop it with the irregularities, what the fuck is wrong with me?!" I wanted to scream.
But all that came out was, "Uh...no."

She steps out and tells me to hang tight for the doctor. A petite, Asian woman enters. She seemed like she was in a rush until she checked my heartbeat. Once again, the same reaction. This was becoming a routine:

Step 1: Check.
Step 2: Wait.
Step 3: Look puzzled.
Step 4: Check again.
Step 5: Smile so patient doesn't panic.
Step 6: Ask, "Has anyone ever told you that you have an irregular heartbeat?"

Before I knew it, I was lying half-naked and exposed with ten little stickies on my chest.
"Well this is comfortable," I thought to myself as the technician hovered over me, looking more and more nervous as he untangled the attached electrical cords.

"Is everything ok for you?" he asked politely.

"Gee," I thought again.

"Uh, yup. This won't hurt will it?" I asked just to make conversation.

"Nah," he said as he pushed some buttons on the machine.

Fortunately, the results were normal. Unfortunately, that meant shit. It turns out that my heart may have actually found its lost beat during the commotion so the doctor requested some blood work to be done. Oh, and by the way this particular clinic I chose no longer does blood draws so they gave me a sheet of paper with at least twenty clinics to choose from (none of which I was at all familar with) and sent me on my way to draw a single tube of blood.

Meanwhile back at the lab, things were slow. Hmmm...

The nurse was sitting back in her recliner talking to one of her kids on her cellphone. It turns out he or she didn't do their homework. After a few minutes, she noticed I was there for her to do her job.

"My, what little veins you got there," she said cheerfully.

The funny, well not so funny, thing is that I draw blood for a living too. And it saddens me that now that the table's are turned, I get this.

So now I have a bruise on my left arm growing bigger each day and still no idea if my heartbeat is truly irregular.