I think I have adoraphobia. It’s like the little fuzzy kitten version of agoraphobia where I am capable of leaving the house, I just don’t want to. Isn’t that cute?
Okay, it’s official. I’ve become one of those people that won’t shut up about their health problems (oh, my aching back!). To wit:
Shortly after my anxiety and panic attack mini-series, I was prescribed this drug, that drug, and the other thing. The other thing was a heart monitor that I have to carry around for 30 days and I’m on the home stretch with only one day to go. It was given to me in a very attractive Iron Man lunch box.
The contraption consists of a necklace whose large boxy pendant swings around and slaps on your chest all the time and requires a AAA battery that has to be changed nearly every day and if you don’t pay attention to the battery level, you wind up getting rudely awakened by a “BEEP-BOOP-BOOP” at three in the morning and you have to replace the battery right then and there or else you are serenaded by more beeping and booping.
The batteries they give you are some cheap ass generic brand that don’t last as long as, say, what the Energizer bunny would provide, and the reason I know this is because they don’t give you enough batteries to last the month and so you have to go to the store and buy real batteries (like Energizer) and then suddenly the batteries last twice as long.
So, what you do is, before you go to bed you put in a new battery, and then when you get up, you observe you still have 80% battery left, so you exchange it with a previous partially already used battery so that it runs out and beep-boop-boops during the day. It’s all very scientific and mathematical and probably too complicated for you to understand.
So anyway, from the boxy pendant protrudes three wires with red, black, and white electrodes at the end that you snap onto three separate electrode pads that are placed on three geographically-specific parts of your body. The first bag of pads were great and stayed where they lay, but now that I’m near the end, I’m using this other bag of cheap ass pads they gave me that have trouble staying put and the monitor screams when one of the electrode pads falls off. (Did I mention there is also a monitor? Yes, it’s like a clunky cell phone that you have to keep within a certain distance of yourself and recharge so often I just leave it plugged into the wall all the time unless I leave the house. If you leave the house and forget to bring your monitor with you, your boxy pendant goes “BRAP-BROP-Boooooo”, until you turn around and go back home and grab your monitor.)
So anyway, these slippery electrode pads occasionally slip off and the monitor (which is plugged into the kitchen wall) starts going “BREEEEEP-BREEEEEEP!” And you run to the monitor to see what’s wrong and the screen says, “The red electrode has been disconnected” (it’s usually the red one that falls off) and it gives you the option to push “SILENT” on the touch screen, only no matter how much you touch it, it doesn’t respond (I know, like your wife – haha – yes, you’re very funny – can we get back to me now, Mr. Interrupter?).
So now I have to whip up my shirt which requires running out of the kitchen because we have no curtains in the kitchen and you never know who could be Peeping Tomming and I have to fish around my shirt for the red wire only to discover that the electrode pad for the red wire is totally stuck to the inside of my shirt. It has no problem sticking to my shirt but can’t seem to stick to me.
So I’ve incorporated Band-Aids into the mix.
They actually call this contraption a heart event monitor because it’s supposed to catch what my heart is doing during an “event”. If an “event” happens, you use the touch screen to report it so they can zero in and know where to look on the timeline to analyze your heart rate. Just before getting the monitor, my heart was racing and I had a tachycardia event. In the almost 30 days since using the monitor? Nada.
In the morning, when the normal bedroom alarm clock goes off, I roll over, and the monitor starts screaming that one or more electrodes has been disconnected and I’m fumbling around trying to unpeel several adhesives pads off of my shirt, check what color the wire is, so I know on which part of my body it belongs. Meanwhile, my husband joins in on the beeping and booping as if it’s become an earworm for him.
“Breeeep breeeep. One or more of your electrodes is disconnected…,” he says sleepily.
“I know! I know!” I say, fiddling with my boxy pendant and wires trying to plug myself back in like a 1940’s Lily Tomlin telephone switchboard operator.
Did I mention Thursday is the last day I have to wear my necklace that came in the Iron Man grey lunch box? Life won’t be the same without it.
Thank God.
One, I’m glad you are getting care, but it would have driven me nuts by now…oh that’s your point. Right. Well, it seems all that slipping and sliding an nut driving would have triggered an “event”. At any rate, I’m glad that your monitoring days are over and you can get back to your regularly scheduled program…life. Take care!
Ah, the wonders of modern medicine. Surely there’s an app for that… or perhaps you could get rich developing one. All it really has to do is go beeeerop intermittently and you’d get the same results. Anyway, glad you survived the month!
Dang, Margaret. I’m glad that “thing” comes off soon. And I really hope that one day soon, you’ll “want” to go out of the house. I really do understand the aversion to leaving home. I suffer from it myself. I “can” do it, but I prefer not to!
The question is, is it fear? Or just plain laziness! 🙂
I wore a wrist monitor for a SCI study about pain for a week. It was a pain…in…the…ass… No, wait… Wrist… Bah. No matter… 😛 And mind you this thing had no wires attached. Now, in the past I’ve also had to wear devices that had tubes and wires as well. So…combining all of that in my head I can imagine what you had to go through. And the connectivity issues… Man… It brings new meaning to the “Internet Of Things”, eh? 😉 And whatever happened to “wireless”??? Bluetooth(tm)(c)(p) and all that? 😛 Oh, no, baby… We’re going to wire you up like a damn Faraday Cage… (Yeah, I said “Faraday Cage”. Nerds in the hiz-house!) All you needed was a tinfoil hat. Yeah! TIN foil, baby! Not this new cheap imitation “al-you-min-eeum” crap. Only heavy duty military spec grade sheets of metal for this guy’s cranium! It’s hard to find. I’ll send you some from my private stash because the government doesn’t want you to have any. (Thanks, Obama.) 😉
Anyway, this is what gets us all through: humor. I love your take on what you are going through. I’m sure it’s therapeutic and I want you to know that it is also an inspiration and much appreciated. It reminds me that there’s not much we can’t handle if we do it with a smile. And do it publicly, too. The sound of our laughter will drown out the sobs and dry the tears. We’re alive and we’re happy to be so, thank you very much Mr. Reality. Take care and I hope everything checks out on the resulting spreadsheets of heart beat data. 🙂
Thank you, Bryan! And funny you should mention Faraday Cage because I’ve heard the term twice in the last week or so and I had never heard it before, so you are on the hippest cutting edge ever! Congratulations.
Sound like the sleep study thing I had to do a home sleep study. Luckily it was only two nights but every time a sensor slipped, it would talk to me. “replace finger sensor, replace finger sensor’ until you woke up to fix it. Yeah, my sleep is terrible because machines are talking to me and waking me up!
LOL, Katie! I’ve never done a home sleep study thing. And of course, I hope I won’t have to, but….never say never!
A family member had a similar need so they taped a tiny device to his chest for 3 weeks; no batteries to deal with, no box, unruly wires, etc. I hope your health issue gets diagnosed and healed, dear lady.
Thank you, Terra!
Been there done that– Such a pain. But if it’s any consolation with one day to go– THAT’S when I had an “event”… like in the last few hours of the last day– Not that you actually WANT an “event” but at least it wasn’t a total waste of time and sleep. Then again, it’ll be fantastic if you don’t have an event and it was just the “tricks of a healthy heart”.
I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed for you, Margaret.
Hang in there,
xo jj
Thanks, Joanna. And yes, I’m hoping my brain was goofing with my heart.
Glad you’re figuring things out. Just imagine being the person who will have to study your information from the past 30 days. You could have thrown in at least one event to make it interesting. 🙂
I know! Poor bored lab tech guy. But yay for me!
You survived! Been there, done that. Not at all fun, quite a relief once it’s gone.
Indeed, Erin. 🙂
Good grief! If that thing is supposed to measure your stress/anxiety level, it sounds like it’s creating most of it. On the other hand, it’s probably fairly effective birth control… Always a silver lining. 😉
Hugs.
Ha! Yeah, not so easy with all the wires, unless you had some weird S&M fetish tie-me-up thing, but then you’d probably be getting beeped and booped while getting boinked. 😉