It’s what all the kewl pre-hypertensive/cardiac patients are wearing this season
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So this morning at 8:40 a.m. I was given a 24-hour blood pressure cuff monitor because of the hypertension, heart disease and cardiac arrest that spreads across my family tree like a plague of root rot. My readings in the office have been high and they wanted to make sure that just office visits (pee in this, wow, your veins are really small) make me nervous and my body wasn’t planning a full blown cardiac episode. Yes, that’s a black cord that runs the length of my back from the machine on my right arm, to my not-dominate arm, the left. It is designed for people who have long mid-sections, so it curls and lays along my back on the right and across my neck and shoulder on the left. I’ve been telling people it’s a morphine pump.
U SO SECKSAY
I hate this thing. It takes a reading EVERY TWENTY MINUTES, so EVERY TWENTY MINUTES I hear a *beep*beep* which is a specialized warning system designed to let me know that my arm from the elbow down is about to go numb and tingly. People think i’m backing up. On a slow count to eleven it inflates, squeezing every ounce of blood from my bicep into my fingers, briefly giving me the look of a sports fan with a large novelty foam hand. It’s holds for eleven seconds, just to ensure the damage is permanent, and then begins to deflate. Slowly. The blood rushes back to my heart, telling it stories of captivity, torture and memorializing the cells that didn’t make it.
IM ON UR ARM, KILLING UR BLOOD
I briefly considered putting this on my cat. Just for grins.
After 11 p.m. tonight, the cuff will only take readings every hour, presumably to let me sleep, as a disruption of my circadian cycle could result in skewed readings. Little does it know I don’t plan on going to bed before 2 tonight, because I’ve got writing to tend to. I almost had them give me this yesterday, but with it being band night, I didn’t want them to think I was having a stroke when I was just working at the bar with thrashers and wannabe thrashers.
It comes off tomorrow at 9:00 a.m., which frankly isn’t soon enough. To think I chortled in the office when Kellie, my nurse, told me that people actually complained about this device. Those pansies, I thought. Suck it up.
I’m a pansy and dammit I won’t suck it up, I WON’T! When she put it on me, I thought it was a little loose, and I tightened it in the car. So stupid. I’ve loosened it twice because I think my arm might be swelling and it’s not necessary for it to be snug. I think it’s even looser than when she put it on, however the muscle contusions make it impossible to tell.
They told me to continue with my normal daily activities, and so far the only difference is that every twenty minutes I bitch about this cuff. I’m still having my Black Eyes (that would be two shots of espresso in a large coffee) and writing at the coffee shop.
In other news, my eBook little black duck sampler is now available on Memoware. It’s still free and it wants to go home with you. Do me the most wonderful of favors and go download it (even if you already have) as well as rate it. I would heart it muchly.