Get Your Goop On: It's Ultrasound Tuesday!

So, my sister and I both had ultrasounds today, for very different reasons.

You might have noticed that I really don't talk about my family much on here (except for my father) and the reason for that is very simple: if they ever found out that the blogosphere was privy to their intimate details, I would promptly and forevermore be missing teeth, testicles, and family dinners.

Privacy is their thing, not so much mine, and so I normally try to respect that. Today, though, I'm not. Fortunately, I don't really think I have to worry so much: my mother only uses a computer at work, my father still uses dial-up, my 31-year-old sister just got an email address six months ago, and my 41-year-old sister strictly uses her computer to research product safety reports, bizarre diets and gossip about washed up celebrities from her youth (e.g., this Saturday I got a very long text message from her about Davey Jones' most recent appearance on an episode of "Spongebob Squarepants.")

My ultrasound was a component of my stress echocardiogram so, obviously, it was an ultrasound of my heart. I was lying down on the exam table naked from the waist up, with one arm propping my head up. It might have looked seductive if I weren't in a doctor's office, if I didn't weigh 136 pounds, and if I didn't have 12 EKG leads and wires stuck all over me.

The ultrasound technician gooped up her doohickey a substance that I can only describe as blue jello cut with seminal fluid-- sorry. She then proceeded to jam and move the goop-slathered device all across my chest. Now, as I mentioned, I'm kind of svelte, and this thin-lipped bitch was shoving her device straight into my sternum and ribs-- not pleasant. So, obviously, as a natural reaction, I was tensing up.

"Can you just relax, please?" she said sharply, "It's really difficult for me to see your heart when you're not relaxed."

Oh, I'm sorry, I wanted to say-- perhaps I would be more relaxed if you shoved a rusty corkscrew and a mango-splitter up my asshole while you're doing that. That's really the only thing missing to put me right at ease.

Crotch.

(Sidebar: I think it's pretty funny that there are still people out there who believe that only caring, empathic people become nurses. The healthcare industry attracts its fair amount of sadists, too. Don't believe me? Become an EMT.)

I don't know how many of you have ever had the opportunity to obtain a cardiac ultrasound, but watching your heart do its thing on that flatscreen GE monitor is really..... um..... disfuckingusting.

Seriously.

My first instinct was to go, "Oh, man-- that's cool" but, after about four seconds of watching it, I was immediately sickened. There's tunnels and caverns and there's shit floating around and goop and blackness and it looks like underwater vegetation or something. I don't know-- maybe you'd be into it. I wasn't.

After the ultrasound, they make you run on the treadmill at varying speeds and incline levels until you're ready to pass out. One of the inclines was so steep I could barely hold onto the fucking grab handles. The fact that they're taking your blood pressure every four minutes doesn't help either. I got heaps of praise and congratulations from the two nurses running the treadmill exercise, for my endurance and for my cardiac performance. Of course, like anyone who's ever been praised after any performance event (yes, even sex) you always wonder if they say that to everyone.

When I left the testing site, I turned my phone back on and there was a voicemail from my 31-year-old sister informing me that the object inside her was officially determined today to be a boy. She was getting gooped on and deviceified at the same time I was, at another facility-- and I'm sure the ultrasound bitch wasn't pressing as hard on her belly as mine was on my sternum.

I called her back immediately and congratulated her.

"Yeah, apparently, from the ultrasound picture we got, he's a pretty well-endowed boy."

Her boyfriend looked at the picture quizically and asked,

"Is that his foot?"

"No, you ass-- that's his dick!" she said.

And it was. There was even an arrow pointing to it that said "Boy."

Apparently, when my sister called my mom to give her the news, my mother reported that there is a family legend concerning the *ahem* proportions of males on her side of the family.

"Wow." I said. "Mommy's a real pig sometimes."

"Yeah," my sister replied. "My kid's definitely gonna be in pornos if it keeps growing at this rate."

"Either that or he'll be doing cock-pushups on exercise videos," I said.

I guess we're all pigs. Healthy pigs, but pigs just the same.