Wow

If anyone invites you to participate in a nuclear stress test, you may want to consider unlawful flight as an option.

Oh, come on, it isn't that bad, is it? Besides, who in their right mind would encourage people to avoid useful diagnostic tests?

The hard part of the stress test is getting your heart rate to the desired target, which in my case was about 150 beats per minute. To achieve that, they had to speed up the treadmill until I was walking literally as fast as I could. One tiny bit faster and I would have had to break into a run, which might actually have been more comfortable. And the angle! I felt like I was a Mexican speed-walker going up the Lhotse Face, for crying out loud. Never mind me, just on my way to the Geneva Spur...

But bear in mind that what started this whole medical extravaganza was the fact that my leg had ballooned up like something the Montgolfier Brothers would have been proud to claim, and over time had become increasingly painful and balky. My leg didn't enjoy that experience. Not at all. And it continued to let me know that it found that experience objectionable until I got myself propped up in bed and took a Percocet. In fact, it's still kind of pissed off at me, but at least it's stopped packing its little overnight bag.

The take-away from all this? If you have any kind of problem with your legs, skip the treadmill and go straight to the adenosine, a drug that chemically simulates exercise. I wish I had. Adenosine is pretty creepy, in my opinion, but it beats having your left leg suffer what NASCAR fans might well refer to as "the Big One."

And thus I offer my sorry experience as a service to mankind.