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Post-Modern Drunk: Totally Wired
September time means back to school for children, and back to the hospital for Stu. Not to stay, but just for a visit this time.
I've been feeling my heart...do things. Suddenly, for no particular reason, I become aware of it. Not exactly racing, or pounding, but just beating, in a way that is uncomfortable or weird. Like it was doing something weird and I've become conscious of it because my body knows something unusual is going on in my chest. This is an odd feeling--not painful exactly, but unsettling enough for me to Google it.
It turns out that having an unpleasant awareness of one's heart beating is the very definition of heart palpitation. And heart palpitations are symptoms of myriad heart problems. The are also symptoms of panicking about what it could mean that you have heart palpitations. And, for what it's worth, they're also something that happens occasionally because you've had heart surgery, perhaps to treat an endocarditis.
So to investigate this, my doctor recommended I be fitted with a Holter Monitor for 48 hours: the Holter is a portable ECG--a portable heart monitor. On Friday, I called up the number given by my doctor, arranged an appointment for today at 11:30, and got directions to their office in an out-of-the-way corner of the hospital. When I got there today, they said they'd never heard of me. One kept asking me, "Who did you talk to?" I said I didn't know, I just called the number my doctor gave me and talked to someone. I made a lot of calls on Friday. "Well, you would have talked to me, and I don't remember talking to you," she said, acting like she was catching me out.. "I don't remember talking to you either, but that was days ago and we write these things down so we don't have to remember having talked to anyone in particular. How else would I have gotten directions to this office?"
They changed tactic: "You're not even in the system here."
"I spent three months in a hospital bed in this hospital. If I wasn't in the system at all, that would be a pretty big problem."
"You don't have an appointment."
"Are you really claiming that I'm pretending to have an appointment so I can get a bunch of diodes strapped to my chest and left there for days on a lark?"
"We only have one Holter 48 Hour Device. What if someone else needs it?"
"Do you have another appointment coming in in the next 48 hours scheduled?"
"No, not scheduled."
"So the only person who might need it is someone who would come in off the street without an appointment. So you can't give it to me because you need to save it for some theoretical person in the same boat as me, who you'd also say shouldn't get it?"
"We might need it!"
"I am not a theoretical person--I am right here in front of you, and I would like my heart problems taken care of."
They eventually walked me down the corridors to a section of the cardiology labs that I remembered from getting my TEE done (if you don't remember the trans-esophagal echocardiogram count yourself lucky). Once at the labs, a nurse both patronizing and stupid strapped the diodes onto me, all the while talking about how she wanted to get this done as fast as possible so she could get out to lunch.
The device looks like I'm smuggling a thick mass-market paperback in under my shirt, except rigged with wires. I'm paranoid someone on the subway is going to mistake me for a suicide bomber and have me gunned down by police. I bet that would tell an interesting tale to whatever technician reads the Holter monitor results. "You can actually pinpoint the exact moment his heart breaks in two!”
