So tomorrow I go in for a tilt table test and to get hooked up for a 24 hour ECG with a Holter monitor.* It is not the first time for either so I’m comfortable with the procedures.
Instead I want to hear from the Doper masses some ideas for fun or “interesting” things to do while I have these wires stuck to me. Not looking to screw with the results, but thinking more along creative ideas to make the process more entertaining.
Pulling at wires and asking a store clerk where the batteries are?
[spoiler]It is a workup for a progressive dysautonomia. Previously (about 16 years agol) I had both tests. Passed out during tile table. Recorded profound bradycardia <20 bpm on Holter Monitor.
Now, years later, my autonomic nervous system is a bit wonkier than usual including anhidrosis below waist and hiperhidrosis above mid chest. Palpitations, pain, and a GI tract that has two speeds - stop and Indy car speed.
[/spoiler]
I like your idea. Open your shirt enough that you can grab the device.
Run into a Wal-Mart clutching it, grab an employee by the shoulder and cry, “Where are the batteries! For God’s sake, man, the batteries!”
Mrsdowan worked for a holter company for a few years, and told me a story about one of their patients.
In the evening the monitor alerted the staff of a large change in heart response, and it was outside of the norm enough to warrant a phone call.
Apparently they caught the patient and partner fooling around in bed, and the patient was …stimulated… enough that it tripped alerts for immediate calls from the monitoring company.
Of course this is one of the cellular enabled devices that is live-monitored, duno which type you have.
So I say if it’s one of those types, give the good staff a chuckle and get your heart fast enough for them to call and then have a laugh w/ them.
Well, that didn’t work out too well. There were problems* at the hospital and no tests were done - yet. May reload and try again at a later time.
*Apparently they want to see if you pass out after they hook you up to the tilt table and monitoring devices, not before when waiting in a chair stuffed in an alcove in a hallway.
I had to wear one of those things all day every day for a week. I was in generally good physical shape in those far-gone days, and did a lot of strenuous hiking regularly. So one day during that week, I went for a strenuous hike up a mountain. I wanted to see what the traces would look like when I was hiking up a mountain and maintaining a pulse rate of 140.
Buy some solar cells from Radio Shack, stuff the wires into you unbuttoned shirt, and run about holding them up and screaming, “Sun! Sun! I must find sun!”
I like carnivorousplant’s first idea. Showing the wires attached to your chest while frantically searching for batteries.
If the monitor is like the ones I’m familiar with, I can tell you how to get that worried phone call with just the tapping of your finger. Creates a perfect V-tach on the monitor.
If you lightly tap one of the electrodes with your finger at a rate of about 200/minute you can make it look like you’re having an episode of ventricular tachycardia. That’s a fun thing to do if you’re actually in the hospital. Do it just until you hear the alarm go off (usually out at the nurses’ station), then when nurses come running in, quickly close the browser on your laptop. Have a slightly embarrassed or guilty look on your face.
In the hallway. Never made it as far as seeing a technician, nurse, or doctor. Vision faded to black and hearing went. So I stuck my head between my knees to keep from hitting floor. Not my first rodeo. At least I understood what was happening and rolled with it.
I like the sunbathing thing. I live on a very tropical island so that could work. Heck, probably could hook up a real solar panel to run the thing, not that it would be necessary, but I could prop one on the lounge chair next to mine and adjust position to track the sun.
