So I just got back from having this test done. It wasn’t a big deal but it held a certain academic interest for me: it was an echocardiogram. Not electro-. Echo-.
Say what?
As the, um, echocardiogrammatical technician (or whatever her title is) led me to the room where the test would be performed, I asked, “So is this like an MRI or something? Or an EKG?”
She didn’t answer that question directly; she just told me what it was. “It’s an ultrasound. Like pregnant women and babies?”
But I wasn’t, uh—
“No.” She smiled. “You’re not pregnant. This is an ultrasound of the four chambers of your heart and a couple of blood vessels in your neck.”
In the examining room, she had me take off my shirt and lie flat on the bed/examining table/whatever they call that thing. She did the gel thing which you see them on TV doing (yes) to pregnant women’s swollen bellies, only to my chest and neck, and then she rolled me on my side and held a wand to the gelled spots, one at a time, for a few minutes each.
I couldn’t see the monitor of the machine from where I lay, so I don’t know if it showed an image of what lay inside. But I do know it had a speaker.
You know how in old Tex Avery (and other) cartoons, when a guy (I think often a wolf, literally) sees a woman he thinks is hot stuff, and his eyes bulge out of his head, and he howls and sometimes says something like Hubba-hubba!, and this heart-shaped protrusion pushes rhythmically in and out of his chest? You know the sound? Right: ba-BOOM… ba-BOOM… ba-BOOM…
For real? What the human heart actually sounds like is, well, say you got a tiny microphone, and you inserted it into a convenient orifice or cavity in the surface of a live snail, and you put the snail on the ground with a wire leading to a powerful stereo speaker, and you touched the snail — gently, repeatedly — with the sole of your foot. That’s what the human heart sounds like:
squ-WISH… SQUOORT… squ-WISH… SQUOORT…
Just in case any of you were wondering.
DarcKnyt says
I had another friend experience the same thing recently, and she said the EXACT same thing. There’s a LOT of fluid in the chest/heart being pushed around. The idea of a drum sound is sort of what it is through a stethoscope, but in the ultrasound it’s much squishier. A baby’s sounds that way too, albeit much faster. :)
Hope you’re okay, though; this usually is performed when there’s a problem. Saying a prayer for ya, JES.
John says
Thanks for the prayer, Darc. I don’t really need it this time but I’ve always figured prayers work like gifts that come with one of those blank purchase receipts: if you can’t use what the giver’s offering, you just exchange it for something else. :)
(And seriously: I deliberately didn’t get into the circumstances because they’re NON-circumstances, but sound a lot worse. Right up until the moment when I tell you, “This was the LAST test of a whole freaking series of them, all of which were negative because as I knew all along the “symptom” had a completely innocent cause. I mean, don’t count your chickens and all that. But still: naught to concern anyone, least of all me!)
marta says
I’ve had several “echos” done, and I know exactly what sound you are talking about. Since I’m supposed to have one every few years, the sound seems…well, I guess I forgot that other people don’t necessarily ever hear it.
John says
marta: That’s like my sense of the sounds I hear in the hearing-test booth every now and then. When I recount what the test is like, people smile or outright laugh at the description, which baffles me until I remember Oh yeah, they had no idea…
whaddayamean says
how did i miss this post yesterday? anyway, hope all the squ-wishing and squirting is going well.
John says
whaddayamean: Thanks — all’s well!
cynth says
I’m glad all is well, John. Aren’t you glad you could hear it though? One of the things I miss about not being able to hear very well, is missing sometimes those little sighing sounds of everyday-ness. Take care.