Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Doctor's Visit

I went to the doctor today to get to the bottom of my recent fainting incident. The whole process took about three hours: one hour to get there, one hour to be examined, and another to get back. (I also took an hour for lunch. I got piroshky again.) The doctor was almost scary in her perkiness. "Oh, that's SUPER-DUPER common..." but decided I needed to have my heart checked up. I now have four electrodes running from my rib cage to a box clipped to my waistband. These will come off on Thursday at noon, and since sensitive electronic can't get wet, it's no showers until then. Every time I feel like something isn't right (like I stand up too fast and get dizzy) I'm supposed to press a button on the side of the box and write down the sensation and what I was doing when it happened. So basically I'm going to be walking around for the next 42 hours with greasy hair and wires sticking out from under my shirt.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Wear a really bright color or obnoxious pattern and people probably won't notice your hair or the wires. Its the box I have no idea how your going to conceal.

Unhappy Home Depot Customer said...

You should wear a robot costume to work.

Dan said...

The box should be about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It's a Holter Monitor, to record every heartbeat. They used to use cassette tapes and 9-volt batteries, but now are mostly solid-state. They were a bitch to repair, because testing them after alignment took hours. We always sent them out to the manufacturer.

There is a computer system called a Holter scanner that reads the heartbeats, scanning the recording for arrhythmias. Interestingly, one of the only devices I encountered that had a real Y2K problem was a Holter scanner. The manufacturer 'patched' it for Y2K, and actually inserted a Y2K problem with it's patch.

I'm sure everything will be fine. Back in the day, when I did direct patient care (on the Dixon) it was way common to see otherwise healthy, young, athletic women with episodes of syncope. Usually just a drop in their already low blood pressure. Did they tell you your blood pressure?

You should be able to wash your hair in the sink, or go to a salon to get it washed, if it's an issue. Just don't get the electrodes wet, or they might not have a good connection -- then you have to do the test again.