The next 30 days are going to be pretty irritating.
Yesterday I picked up my “30-day event monitor” from the hospital. The device itself is like an old school, clunky pager that I wear clipped to my waistband. There are two wires connecting the pager-part to electrodes that I attach to my body with strong sticky things (made by 3M, funnily enough).
The monitor is patient-activated, so any time I feel dizzy I have to push a button and stand still for 30 seconds or so while it records whatever my heart is doing. When it’s not recording, it’s not doing anything – except being a nuisance. Every 2-3 “events”, I have to call the hospital and “download” them through the phone, not unlike a fax machine. Oddly, it takes about a minute to download a 30-second event.
I’m supposed to wear it all the time, except when I’m showering. I think I’m going to refuse to wear it to bed (I didn’t wear it last night): I’ve never gotten dizzy in bed, so I don’t see why I should make myself uncomfortable for nothing.
I wore it yesterday when I worked out and at kung fu, and it wasn’t too much of a hassle, except that all my sweat made one of the sticky things de-stick, which was obnoxious. Now I know I have to carry extras with me!
This thing is going to take some getting used to, in general. If I don’t hit the button immediately upon feeling dizzy, it’ll miss the entire “event” and won’t be of much help. Also, going to the bathroom is a pain in the butt since it’s clipped to my waistband, and now that I’m drinking water like mad, I’m using the bathroom more than I’d like to admit.
Thirty days of this. I hope they figure out what’s wrong with me after all this trouble! I joked yesterday about being a robot… now I’m a cyborg.
