Friday Video

Sometimes, people will believe technology over their own two eyes. I was reminded of this when I went in for my EKG today.



Everything at the EKG went fine- at least as far as I know. The woman running the machine didn't have to call anyone in for a second opinion or anything. When I left, I didn't have to walk through a gauntlet of med students, furiously writing on their clipboards as they stared at various parts of my body. And the surgery for next Friday still stands. So, I guess that's all good.

I'm not sure what to make of the woman who ran the machine, though. She had me unbutton my shirt, hop up on the table and lie down, then she hooked up all of the electrodes. It seemed to go just fine-except she had a hard time with one of the electrodes.

For some reason, she kept struggling with the one on the right side of my chest. She claimed it wasn't sticking, but as far as I was concerned, it was sticking just fine. Apparently, the blinking lights on the machine were saying otherwise.

Finally, she ripped the electrode off, along with a minute portion of my skin- thus proving that it was sticking just fine, and she tried it again, this time with a different electrode. This went on for three or four tries.

Then she asks if I'm wearing any VapoRub. Are you kidding me? Does she have a sense of smell? Well, I have a sense of smell- and my smell sure doesn't remind me of VapoRub.  Anyway, by the third or fourth try, she finally managed to get the last electrode stuck on me to the machine's satisfaction.

So, I' m laying there, my shirt open- revealing my pasty, bloated body- not unlike one of those weird giant squids that sometimes washes up on a beach somewhere- the kind in those photographs that always has a crowd standing around them, looking down at them with expressions that range from disgust to out right revulsion- and as I'm lying there, she's standing next to me staring at the now non-blinking machine, and she says (and I'm not kidding), "Huh. Are you an athlete?"

Evidently, along with having lost her sense of smell, her eyesight is on it's way out as well. 

I looked around to make sure that no one else had come in, and when I was sure she had indeed been talking to me, I laughed and asked her why she would ask such a thing. She said that it was because my pulse was low, "like an athlete".

So, despite all the evidence to the contrary- literally laid right out in front of her- this was the conclusion she came to? It seemed to me that a more obvious reaction might have been to stick a mirror in front of my mouth and see if I were still breathing.

My confidence in this whole operation is starting to melt.