Warning: May Cause Cardiac Arrest

Do you really want to read that Echocardiogram Report?

FranMorelandJohns
The Haven
Published in
2 min readSep 26, 2024

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Photo by Lucas Vasques on Unsplash

Echocardiogram Test Results Reports are not for the faint-hearted. Perhaps they are also not for the laity — you and me, the dummies whose hearts get echocardiogrammed and reported on, but what do we know?

I should’ve quit with the ‘sigmoid septum’ thing. The report said it was ‘normal variant with aging . . . and no evidence of outflow obstruction.’ Wouldn’t that be enough?

But no. Something in these official Reports hypnotizes you. You plunge ahead.

‘Mild diastolic dysfunction!’ Can one live with dysfunction in the diastol? I don’t know. I mean, I know dysfunction just about everywhere else . . .

It is, in all probability, dysfunctional by definition to read the report of one’s recent echocardiogram. So why in the heck do they send you the thing? To raise your blood pressure, perhaps. I read on.

Oh, lord, ‘Mild tricuspid regurgitation.’ That’s got to make you sick.

Plus, a lot of the report has to do with Teichholz formulas. Did I miss something in Human Biology 101? Dr. Teichholz had to have been there somewhere, unless he wasn’t born until after I passed Human Biology with a D minus/minus/minus. Still . . .

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The Haven
The Haven

Published in The Haven

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FranMorelandJohns
FranMorelandJohns

Written by FranMorelandJohns

Lifelong newspaper & magazine writer, author, blogger at franjohns.net, agitator for justice, kindness & interfaith understanding.