How old were you when you had your first EKG/ECG, echocardiogram, stress test

Never had a stress test but a supine (lying down) position ECG - plenty! It all started since very early age as a small child. I had a benign heart murmur since I was a toddler. The checks went on until adulthood. The exams at the cardiologist were actually what triggered my medical fetish. The cardiologist during my childhood - and teens - was an old (she was old to me anyway) strict woman. I always felt humiliated, degraded and I always thought she would put her nose in things she wasn't supposed to.

First of all she always told me to strip from my waist up in a rather "theatrical" way and cheered me on with the nurse. She always had remarks about my posture or how my body was developing, but in a joking demeaning way. Like "oh look what a big muscular guy" when I was a slouched thin 13-year-old nerd. She would always check my throat and teeth using a wooden spatula, she often stuck it quite deep to trigger a gag reflex, which she always treated as me being particularly uncooperative. She'd palpate the lymph nodes on my neck and under my arms. Then I'd be told to lie down on the exam table.

She had this ancient ECG machine with a crane arm with brick-red suction cup electrodes on it. She'd swivel it to a sink where she'd wash them and then back at me, where she'd just drop the bunch of them on my belly and started sticking them on my chest. She'd always scold me for my heart racing too much and ruining the test and always told me not to be scared and relax (yeah right, as if I could do that on command). Then almost always, as the nurse would take the electrodes off my chest, I would be reminded to keep lying down and not sit up or stand, because "We haven't finished yet, where do you think you're going?!". She would unbutton and unzip my jeans and lower them to expose my lower belly and then she'd palpate in quite deep asking if it hurts (I didn't know what the reason was for her doing that, I don't know now). Then she'd listen to my heart and lungs in different positions, lying down, sitting up, standing. I honestly and utterly hated that woman.

My first EKG was when I was around 13 or 14. I had my first stress echo in college/university. Probably around 18 or 19.

I had my first EKG at my pre-college physical exam. This exam included a chest x-ray and my first rectal exam. All of my yearly physical exams ... since turning 35 ... have included an EKG. Additionally, my cardiologist has performed four echo-cardiograms on me.

Being bare chested and auscultated is a HUGE turn on for me!

I was 59 years old when I had my first EKG. It was done as part of the pre-surgery stuff when I was getting my plate put on my broken radius.

The two techs had a hard time getting the machine to work. It was a bit old and cardiology got the newer, better machines. With persistence they finally got a good one.