One of Herald's own gives first-person account of CT scan and her results

I'm not so different from many of you.

I live in the vain hope that you can't tell from the mug shot accompanying this column that I'm middle-aged and overweight. No news there. I've been carrying around extra weight for, oh, more than 20 years.

But I took pride in being an active fat person. For many years I exercised nearly every day, sweating it out on treadmills and elliptical machines, lifting weights, stretching and doing sit-ups. I played volleyball. I took long walks.

My cholesterol was always good, my blood pressure was always low (thanks to good genes).

But a few years ago, life got busier. I took on a second job, and there went those 90-minute exercise sessions. Changes in this job, which have created some havoc with my schedule, don't help any. I now find there are weeks at a time when I haven't gotten to the gym, and when I do, it's for maybe 30 minutes.

And it is showing. I'm heavier, I'm weaker and I get out of breath more easily. And I worry about my heart.

So when a public relations rep from Delnor-Community Hospital in Geneva pitched the idea of a first-person story for American Heart Health Month in February, I bit. The goal? To get the real facts about what's going on in the left side of my chest. And to get you to do the same.

They're making it easy. "Know Your Heart," the part where they figure out your risks, is free and only takes about a half-hour.

And the second part? Have they got a deal for you. Seventy-five percent off a cardiac CT scan, if you sign up through Saturday. A $395 value, you can get it for $99.

Sad to say, I probably spent that much on fast food last month.

Thump-a, thump-a

I had the cardiac CT scan on Valentine's Day.

I was warned to avoid caffeine (I don't drink coffee or tea); nicotine (I don't smoke); antihistamines (never take them); and exercise (see paragraph five above) the morning of the test.

At 10:15 a.m., I was ready to have invisible rays shoot through me.

Electrodes were attached to several places on my chest, to measure my heart rate. And ladies, while you can keep your shirt on, you'll have to remove your underwire bra.

I laid on a platform, with a wedge beneath my bent knees, a pillow under my head and my hands stretched over my head.

Don't look, the technician told me; there's a laser in the large metal circle that can hurt eyes.

The platform slid in to the middle of the doughnut. The machine-lady's voice told me when to breathe and when to hold my breath. The machine took 56 pictures, from collarbone down.

Each picture is kind of like slices in a loaf of bread. They looks for calcium buildup in my arteries, which would suggest if plaque was accumulating and narrowing the vessels. The calcium latches on to plaque.

If it weren't for the holding-the-breath part, I could have taken a nap. From registration to dismissal, it couldn't have taken more than 40 minutes. A radiologist was to read the pictures, and a written report would be sent to my house.

Unless they saw something really bad. Then a representative from the cardiac testing department would call. Every day when I got home, I checked the answering machine a little fearfully.

True confessions

The next week, I took the free screening.

"We're basically helping people find out their individual risks," said outreach coordinator Sandy Boyd, R.N.

I suppose there are people who don't know their risks, but that's not me. I know I eat too many saturated fats (I panic if there is no butter in the fridge.) I've been known to eat sweets four times a day. Stress? See "changes in this job."

I zip through two forms, checking off answers to questions about my diet, family history of heart disease, stress and motivation to be here. I weigh myself on a nearby scale and enter that (and no, I'm not telling you.)

Laura File, an exercise physiologist with the cardiac rehabilitation program, jabs my finger to draw blood for the lipids test. While that processes in the Cholestech machine, we talk.

She gives no quarter.

Lining up my height and weight on a chart, she shows I have a body-mass index of 36.5. Just as I expected: I am butter. I should aim, at first, to get that down to 30, she says. Then concentrate on getting it to between 20 and 25.

Looking over my forms, she suggests lower-fat eating, which I can learn by attending free workshops the hospital offers. Exercise would help, too, and would be good to fight stress also; she recommends swimming, or ai chi, a form of tai chi done in the water.

And, while acknowledging I have a busy schedule, she gently but firmly makes the point that I have to take care of my body.

"Is it worth finding the time to go to that class?" is what I have to ask myself, she says. "What can I do to make myself feel better?"

The numbers now are printing out of the machine.

Total cholesterol: 190

HDL: 40*

Triglycerides: 107

LDL: 128*

Non-HDL: 150

Total cholesterol/HDL: 4.7*

Glucose: 102*

What am I to do?

The ones with the asterisk are not good. File suggests that I may want to talk to my doctor about having a C-reactive protein test, which will indicate if there is inflammation. We also discuss whether fluctuating female hormones can affect the numbers. "Everything kind of connects together," she said.

Still, "I never ever look at the big picture," File said. The emphasis is on picking one change that you can stick with.

I decide that it has to be the exercise. She writes on my "action plan": treadmill, elliptical machine, weights; two to four times a week; 30 to 60 minutes at a time; to get a BMI of less than 30.

Diet? Heart-healthy, more fiber, eating breakfast.

Other: Work on my motivation.

"We start small," Boyd said. "We want people to kind of focus on one thing they are willing to do to reduce their risk of heart disease. We want them to come back in six months." They don't want people to feel hopeless, as if the goal is so impossible they might as well not even try.

The envelope…

The CT scan results come in the mail about a week later.

The chart goes from 0 to 400 points. Zero is good. Four hundred? There's a high likelihood that at least one spot in an artery with greater than 50 percent blockage.

And mine?

Despite my habits, I am a zero.

How can this be?

Carol Kenyon, the cardiac nurse who reviews results with patients, said it could be that I just don't have any disease forming.

But plaque could be forming, and just not enough calcium has deposited yet to show up on the scan. So I shouldn't take this as permission to ignore my cholesterol, glucose and weight.

The staff, she said, was surprised by the number of people who had no symptoms of coronary disease, such as pain, yet had scores of 400-plus. They were urged to contact their primary care physicians and start working on lowering those risks.

And she stresses that they should take advantage of support from their physician and Delnor's heart health programs.

"It is difficult to do this by yourself," she said.

So I'll see you at the gym; I'll attend classes such as "Feeding a Smart Heart" and "Transform Stress for Heart Health;" and in six months, I'll get re-tested and let you know the results.

If you go

To schedule the cardiac CT scan or the free "Know Your Heart" assessment, call Delnor-Community Hospital's community education department at (630) 208-3999. The "Know Your Heart" assessments are held once a month. For a schedule of that and other heart-health activities, visit www.delnor.com.