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The acts commenced on this ball of earth: Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
Later that same day, I'm nervously waiting back at the surgery. The doctor is running late this time, and I know he is fitting me in his lunch hour. There are lots of people waiting, it is clearly not the time to go to the Doctor's.
Eventually, he comes out and calls me in. This is interesting because normally the doctor calls you in over the loudspeaker "Mr. Smith to Doctor Spock's room!" but my doctor likes to come out and get you. He explained it was more personal and gets him out of his chair doing some exercise. However, the drawback to this tactic is if your patient is nervous or worried, the short walk back to the room is full of small smiles and silences. He can hardly ask "How are you?" can he.
In the room, he bids me to sit down whilst he looks over three graphs arranged on his desk. I'm certain he's already had a look at them, because he only glances at them for a second before getting down to business.
The top graph is a printout from the patient hooked up to the E.C.G machine prior to me. Completely normal, he explains. Next in line is my first scan. On the right of the page, are four large outputs, three of which are identical with the same peaks and valleys. The fourth is clearly different. The peaks are in the wrong place, and much much lower. Finally, is my second printout. This has four graphs again. However, this time all four are the same.
He explains that my first printout is not clinically possible and the second is perfectly normal. He doesn't say it, but I can infer that the first test wasn't conducted correctly, either the nurse had made a mistake, or the machine had gone wrong. I think he'd got a previous patients printout out to see if the machine was on the blink or not.
Either way, there was no problems with my 'proper' readout. He did a few measurements on it with a ruler, presumably measuring the gaps between peaks to make sure my heartbeat was regular. I was to see him next Friday to get the results of the bloodtest and chest x-ray.
A quick blood pressure test (which I tried to fake) and I was out the door. On the way out, I passed the nurse. "Was everything okay?" she asked.
"Oh fine, actually," I replied.
No thanks to you. What were you trying to do? Give me a heart attack?
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So, right, bear with me to check that I understand this right: you're just fine. The first reading was a bad test, and there's nothing at all wrong?
Good news if so.
Posted by Aquarius at February 25, 2002 04:30 PMThe second printout was completely fine. I'll have to wait for the chest x-ray and bloodtest before I get the all clear. And I'll still getting chest pains so something is wrong.
Posted by Paul at February 25, 2002 04:45 PMGeorge settles into a pattern, Emilia gets slightly cheekier, I ponder on various things, I watch multiple football games, and read a lot (2)
Lots of work, lack of updates, a decision to make, George is getting fatter and the World Cup starts this week, (2)
George's 4 week birthday and Emilia's reaction to George (0)
It is interesting how two children from the same genetic stock can be so different. Even though he is only... (0)
It is 3am and the only way George will sleep is if I continually walk up and down the living room at a consistent and slow pace. (1)
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