Five Extra Nipples

I am still in pain.

Early Wednesday morning I went to take a stress test to see how my heart was functioning. I had been a nervous wreck since Monday since I was afraid I would be diagnosed with a deadly heart ailment. And my paranoia was worse since my dad died due to heart problems. To add to that lunacy, I had to fast for 12 hours before the procedure and ingest no caffeine all day Tuesday. And then to make things better, my stomach was killing me on Wednesday morning. Oh yeah, I was a ton o’ fun to be around by the time the stress test commenced at 8am.

Seven hours later I was stuck in hell.

The IV needle was still under the skin near my left elbow and it was itching uncontrollably. In lieu of running on a treadmill for 60 minutes, thallium and who-knows-what-else were injected into my bloodstream, and that part of the stress test gave me a humongous headache and nauseated me to the point that I nearly shit my shorts. I was about to retake some sort of MRI-like exam for the fourth time. My fast had entered its 24^th hour.

I was slowly going stir-crazy.

I finally finished and arrived home at 4pm. Tired, pissed, hungry, bitchy, dazed, and incredibly unpleasant to be around. Though a nice hot meal and some downtime in front of the TV helped, there was still the annoying matter of getting the plastic suction things off my chest. During the stress test, about five plastic suction things each with a metal tip were placed on my chest and wires would connect to the metal protuberances in order to measure my heart function. These plastic nipples still adhered to me like leeches by the time I got home. Taking them off hurt far too much since chest hairs had stuck to the damn plastic things, I couldn’t cut them with scissors, and showering barely helped at all. So I had no other choice but to yank the suckers out, and try not to scream too loud at the pain or the sight of small tufts of chest hair being stuck on suction cups. It hurt like hell and my chest still smarts from having its hair torn by the roots.

I will never get a bikini wax in my lifetime.