Apart from a few slight – but totally forgiveable – imperfections based around minor character issues, I have always thought, at the very least, my heart was in the right place.
But not any more.
I’ve come to this conclusion after wearing a holter heart monitor for 24 hours. Don’t fret, people! I’m fine. I was wearing it for a friend who gets a little squeamish doing those sorts of things. It’s the least I could do for an old mate.
So to get fitted, I rang around a few pathology outlets nearby; one’s mainline had been disconnected. I left a message on their mobile yet no-one rang back. Business must be brisk. Left a message at another outlet’s mobile and after they didn’t call back either, I thought I’d just drop in.
After waiting for a fair while clutching my number – like those awaiting their calls to the tumbrils during the Reign of Terror – I was called into a treatment room where I was promptly told by this nice lady technician I’d have to make an appointment for that holter to be attached.
“I thought I would have had to; that’s why I left a message on your office mobile!” I said, rather politely for, if the truth be known, the wait wasn’t that long. If the waiting room had been filled with people who are really sick like my mate possibly is, my response night have been just a little narkier.
“You can’t have done that,” she replied. “You can’t leave messages on our mobile.”
“Oh, but I did,” I replied sweetly.
Anyway, the next available appointment was a week away and I immediately hoped my mate’s heart condition wasn’t too serious.
Before she waved me away, she said, and I thought rather admiringly with perhaps just a frisson of sexual tension: “That’s a very manly, well-forested chest you have there. You’ll need to shave that area,” she added, waving a hand in the general direction of what has always passed for me as a chest. Okay, maybe she didn’t say the first bit.
So, after that week passed and my mate was still alive and well, I thought I’d do the right thing and shave the areas where these electrodes or whatever they are called were to be applied.
Naturally, I went to Doctor Google and “how to apply a holter heart monitor”. As you can see the two upper-most images (at top) were more or less the same. The top two positions over the most forested region of my manly chest made perfect sense. The one under my right half of that manly chest not so much, seeing the heart is ever so slightly to the left of the sternum. But who am I to quibble with medical experts? Maybe it’s got a better line of listen from over there; maybe it’s been deliberately backed off a bit not to put the heart under too much pressure seeing 24 hours is a long time to be listened to and spied on.
Some quick razor work later, three sizable circles as smooth as a baby’s bum were ready for my fitting so down I went. A different but still lovely lady applied the apparatus.
It wasn’t until after the 24 hours had passed before, purely out of interest and before I headed back down to get the holter removed, I checked over where she had plastered the electrodes, or whatever they are called, into place.
As you can see, none of the sensors were placed on the hairless plop-them-here circles I had prepared earlier. One of the two that I thought would have been side by side at the top of my manly, bulging pecs was up on its lonesome under my throat.
The other had slipped down and to the left, so that two now appeared to be listening to the same sounds or else shared a rather unhealthy interest in my left nipple. The one that perhaps should have been on my right pec had settled comfortably in the middle of my sternum. The lowest – and it’s debatable where this one would have originally been in Doctor Goggle’s diagrams – was so far down that it was more likely to monitor lower intestine rumbles rather than my heart beats half a torso away.
Now look here! I’m not saying in any way, shape or form that my electrodes weren’t put in the right place. I thought the lady was very professional and rather sweet. Technology changes all the time; Doctor Google’s halters were clearly earlier models.
I really wasn’t that upset that my deforestation efforts had proved a waste of time; in fact I was sure everything was tickety-boo and I’m hoping for my mate’s sake the results come back clearing him of any heart issues.
But the more I think about it, I do remember the tech lady shaking her head a fair bit and rather ruefully when I took my shirt off. Had she seen something odd but was too embarrassed to share that with me?
As mentioned at the outset, is it just possible that my heart is nowhere near where a normal human being’s heart is? Disturbing as that might be, it could explain a lot of things, really.
Don Gordon-Brown
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