The next decade....what's in store?

Information is essential!

Steups. I had cause to kiss my teeth today at the Heart Institute of the Caribbean (HIC).

Imagine, me call dem yesterday fi mek one appointment to get fitted with a holter monitor. Every now and again my heart skps a beat and is NAT FROM UN HOMBRE *shucks*. So about 18 months ago I had gone there to have an ECG. As usual, nutten nuh wrong. So the Doc said the next step would be to do this thing where they hitch on a holter monitor to you and it records your heart rate for 24 hours.

Now, yesterday, the receptionist could have asked me what my normal routine is, and tell me what I could and could not do once I had it fitted. But no, all she do is gimme a time (9:30am) and tell me how much it cost.

I pride myself on being on time so got there at 9:26am. You have to sign in and one column asks "appointment time" and the other "arrival time". That I suppose is so yuh cyant cuss if yuh reach after di time and waan get tru quick stick.

I had carried two magazines with me (Shape and Oxygen). Read those. At 10:00am, the clerk or whoever the money collector is, called me to a room and she ran the credit card for enough money to make me wince. But is for my health, so onlly a mini-wince. 1/2 hour not so bad to wait I thought. She sent me back to sit dung in di comfortable couch dem. Actually I had not finished the magazines so continued that. I was so engrossed in them that I did not realize when 11:00am came. Remember I had a 9:30 appointment.

I went over to Miss Receptionist and ask her could she please find out when I would be seen because I find it is unreasonable to be waiting 1.5 hours. Hear har nuh...."Oh, you're still here? I thought you had left!". One loud steups in my mind. She made some calls, told me to sit back down and in about 5 minutes I was called.

Nurse fits me up with the holter thingy and I just happened to mention to her that I going to exercise now. No! Huh? That don't make any sense. Most times it is while doing cardio that my heart beats funnily so wouldn't they want to record when that happens? According to them, the monitor will do its job and if anything is there they will find it. Well I tell miss Cuban Nurse that it will come back blank because nutten usually happen just so. I have to be exerting effort and since mi not going horizontal these days, is ongly from 'hexercising' that my heart will be under stress.

So I left there steupsing inwardly, then went about seeing if I could stress out my heart. I didn't have to go far to do that.

I turned on to Eastwood Park Road, realized I was in the wrong lane and tried to get over to the left. Would anybody let me out? I started shouting in the car "you're all so damn mean!!!!!!!!". I got a log to record when anything feels funny with my heart beat, but that didn't work. Nothing to log so far. Tonight is Kalooki. Maybe when I try to get a "call!!!" my heart will react.

I suppose it would be nice to get a clear reading when they take it off tomorrow morning, but after you pay so much money, you kinda want some answers.....it's kinda like you're getting a return on your investment!

Posted by yamfoot at December 29, 2006 02:31 PM