Squat

It turns out that that is how much I knew about echocardiograms going in: squat.

"It's a painless procedure." Famous last words, for the Marquesa de Sade will spend twenty minutes grinding an ultrasound transducer into the center of your surgical scar, pressing and twisting until you end up with a spiffy bruise and an urge to, in the words of Justin McBride, "kill the shit out of everything."

But at least it's over with. And it's most cool to watch, even though I'm not competent to interpret the results. But how many times in the average day do you get to see your heart valves in action? Or hear the sound of blood moving hither and yon in your various atria and ventricles (ventria?)? During this test, where I could actually hear the phwish-phew-pwish-phew of my blood, there were occasional loud cracking pops. I couldn't decide if I thought they were caused by turbulence at the instant of the heart valves opening, or were artifacts that should have been filtered out by the software. So I asked her if those popping sounds were normal, and she said "Well, I'll tell you, if you didn't hear them, you wouldn't be here to ask."

So I'm confused - if you have a heart attack in a forest, does it make a sound??

Well, now I just have to wait, but I'm still a little flabbergasted by the thought that yesterday I could see my heart doing its thing. I have a hard time believing I have internal organs at all (I guess I assume that all that "stuff" in there is just wadded-up newspaper) but there it was in all of its many-tubed, artery-girded, throbbing, valve-pumping glory. I expected my valves to be fluttery little things, almost delicate, but as it happens they open and close with considerable authority. I hope that's good.