Stress Test

When I was at Mass General Hospital a couple of weeks back, they did a lot of testing.  Hourly EKGs, blood tests, chest x-rays.  But the big one, the sort of final exam as it were, was the stress test.  They put you on a treadmill, start you off at 1.7 MPH and a 10% incline, and go for three minutes while they look to see what your EKG and blood pressure are doing.  At three minutes, they increase the test to 2.4 MPH and a 12% incline.  Three minutes later, 3.0 MPH and a 14% incline.  And three minutes later, 3.6 MPH and a 16% incline.  Lance Armstrong could have stayed on there for another three hours, but by that point, I was about done.  Then into an armchair, watching the EKGs and blood pressure decline back to resting state, another seven or eight minutes.

I passed that test just fine, which is the biggest reason they sent me home.  If you can do all that and recover quickly, then your heart is likely strong.

But they missed a test, a different kind of stress test.  You've probably seen them; you can do these things online and get a sense of how much stress is occurring in your life.  In fact, here's one, taken from the Job Center of Wisconsin (very smart of them to think about the stress of unemployment instead of just the economic implications).  Why don't you all play along at home right now?

Have you had any of the following things happen to you during the past year? If so, simply circle one of the numbers preceding each of those items. Score only the items which apply to you.

Point       Life
Value      Event

15          Change in social activities

15          Change in sleeping habits

20          Change in residence

20          Change in work hours

20          Change in church activities

25          Tension at work

25          Small children in the home

25          Change in living conditions

30          Outstanding personal achievement

30          Problem teenager(s) in the home

30          Trouble with in-laws

30          Difficulties with peer group

30          Son or daughter leaving home

30          Change in responsibilities at work

30          Taking over major financial responsibility

30          Foreclosure of mortgage or loan

35          Change in relationship with spouse

35          Change to different line of work

35          Loss of a close friend

40          Gain of a new family member

40          Sexual difficulties

40          Pregnancy

45          Change in health of family member

45          Retirement

50          Loss of job

50          Change in quality of religious faith

50          Marriage

50          Personal injury or illness

60          Loss of self-confidence

60          Death of a close family member

60          Injury to reputation

65          Trouble with the law

65          Marital separation

75          Divorce

100         Death of a spouse

____        Grand total

Your total score measures the amount of stress to which you have been subjected.

• A score of 150 or less is normal.
• With a score of 150-250, one-third of all persons will experience illness or accident.
• If you scored 250-300, you have a 50:50 chance of accident or illness.
• Above a score of 350, you may be 75 percent sure of trouble in the months ahead.

Look again at that bottom statement.  "Above a score of 350, you may be 75% sure of trouble in the months ahead."

When counting these things up conservatively, I'm at 505; Nora's at 485.  And none of those points come from the big ones that get you 65 or 75 or 100 points at a crack.  It's just a wild accumulation of all the small and middle stresses.

THAT's the health concern we're both focused on right now.  It's not like we're going to retire and head for Florida (its own sets of stressors, anyway), but we have to make some pretty serious decisions about how to either eliminate some stress or to accommodate it differently.

Thank god we don't have "problem teenager(s) in the home," and that Nora's not pregnant...

[Editor's note: Well, as far as Herb knows! ]

I give my students a sort of stress exam in my Year One Seminar, using the calculation of stress in a beam as a metaphor for managing stress in your life.  The equation is (load x beam length) / (beam width x beam depth squared).  So let's look at the metaphor:
Load — all those stressors we just identified
Length — the expected duration of each stressor.  Having a cold for two days is one thing, having pneumonia for two weeks is another.
Width — the breadth of your social support network
Depth — your depth of purpose.  If you're really morally committed to the work you do, for instance, you can bear up to a lot more than if it's just a job.

So you can reduce the size of your stress equation by either shrinking the numerator (reducing stresses or stress durations) or by increasing the denominator (turning more often to friends, re-examining the fundamental mission behind your work).

But then I look at this number — 505!!! — and I think, what the hell am I doing teaching anybody anything about stress management??  And the coming ten days are likely to be momentous on at least three fronts, and we'll be pushing toward 550.  WTF?

I think of the ones we could eliminate, and there aren't many in the short term.  But maybe we could at least stop adding more.  A "perfect score" on the Wisconsin test, being able to say yes to every item, is 1405 points, so we've still got some things we could avoid.

[Editor's note # 2:  Do cats count as kids? Especially when our intimate morning was interrupted by crashing glass downstairs?  And what about outstanding personal achievement?  Please, friends, I can't handle any rewards! And one more... for those of you who are more religiously inclined than I, please understand that a sudden conversion to religious faith would add 70 points! ]