Wired
If you ever have to go do a fretful medical thing, I highly recommend taking a professional humorist along. It makes things so much more fun. Fortunately I had one handy, so I hauled Howard with me to go get my heart monitor.
In the car on the way down:
Sandra: “I can just pretend we’re driving together in the car for no particular reason.”
Howard: “Is that this morning’s quota for denial?”
S: “De Nile is my friend. It has fish in it.” Short pause for thought “And mud. It has fish and mud.”
H: “And crocodiles.”
S: “But they’re okay cause I just pretend they are my friends.”
The heart monitor has seven wires attached to sticky patches. The wires connect to a little box the size of a deck of cards. It is optimally designed to read the electrical impulses of a heartbeat without being overtly annoying. It is not designed to be discreet. It is all lumpy under my clothes. So I’ll be wearing stuff baggy for the next 24 hours. I’ll also apparently be keeping a journal of anything which might affect my heart rate. Things like eating, exercising, being upset, etc. The monitor also has a little blue button on it. I am supposed to push the button if I think a heart event of any note is taking place. This puts a little marker on the recording. So far I’ve yet to use the blue button. As much as I don’t like my heart going flippity-flop, I want it do demonstrate the capability at least once today.
After getting me wired, Howard and I went shopping together. The stores were not very exciting (Office Max, Sam’s Club, Robert’s Crafts, and a storage unit) but it was fun to be there with Howard. I like hanging out with him and exchanging whimsical comments. Things like seeing a whole roll of raffle tickets for sale and suggesting we should buy them because then we would totally win the prize.
On the trip home we amused ourselves by reviewing the heart monitor instructions. One entire paper was devoted to assuring nervous heart patients that while these tests take several days to process, if there is something to truly be concerned about, it will be addressed quickly. Only they didn’t say “quickly” or “urgently” or even “In an emergency fashion.” Instead they said “emergently.” I think they were trying to express emergency and urgently in the same word, but I’m not sure.
Howard then spent the rest of the drive finding creative uses for the word “emergently.” He demonstrated merging gently. He demonstrated emerging into an intersection gently. There was at least one more, but I forget what it was.
I love Howard. He can make me laugh even when I’m going to one of my least favorite places in the world. The heart monitor was handed out at the same hospital which did my radiation therapy. It is also the same hospital where Howard stayed for when he had myocarditis. The care and people there are excellent, it just is not a happy place for me. But Howard makes me laugh and asks cheerfully if I’ve gotten to push my blue button yet.
I do not know what I’d do with out him.