Did he think we were early-adopters at the cutting edge of technology?<\/p>\n
As mentioned Sunday, the week turned out busy again, with me, Nancy, still run down, but at least I am keeping down food.\u00a0 I spent many hours searching records of former grads that were on the alumni list at CWU marking people to email the invitation of the celebration to, that will occur on Oct 2, a Saturday afternoon, meet and greet and eat and drink.\u00a0 Also went to a music event at the Rehab center where I spent 6 weeks.\u00a0 They all call me by name when I walk by, or come stick their head in the door and wave.<\/p>\n
There was no exercise class and although I didn\u2019t probably have much energy, I stopped by only to find it was cancelled, Monday.\u00a0 Wednesday and Friday I was not able to go because Wednesday I was still involved with getting the heart event monitor (supposedly for a week) installed.\u00a0 John will tell about that, inserting it below, but meanwhile, I just read his treatise (and it is worth reading), and see he wants me to describe the second unit.<\/p>\n
The first unit meant for a week is what he describes.\u00a0 It only had two connections to the relatively light unit, but it was for a week, with a button I could push when I felt stress or to generate a recording.\u00a0 There are only 9 tracks.\u00a0 It was too sensitive and picking up (without the ability to filter out) something we already know I have, atrial fibrillation.<\/p>\n
We changed to a unit that was only for 24 hours, but weighed a LOT more–really heavy hanging in my pocket and connected to me in six places.\u00a0 The first top place was poorly placed by the installer on top of the worst, deepest part of scar tissue from my original scar down the middle of my chest (at the top).\u00a0 This guy needs to be told, and I will.\u00a0 Where it made the difference was taking it off 24 hours later \u2013 when I pulled the tape and the connector I had the worst pain I have had in many months.\u00a0 I screamed and scared John, and probably everyone else on the Naneum Fan.\u00a0 I got the dogs\u2019 attention and probably the horses as well.\u00a0 At least John was not out lifting one of their feet when I screamed.\u00a0 After getting over that removal, the other five were not over scars, and did not hurt coming off.\u00a0 But I was worn out from the experience. \u00a0My next visit to the cardiologist is 2 weeks away and we\u2019ll get results and suggestions then.<\/p>\n
Check below for a nice write-up by John explaining the first old technology I was supposed to live with for a week.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I will insert the nice things that happened Saturday and Sunday, that also were very taxing on my system.\u00a0 First thing we did was Saturday, drive to a restaurant on the Lake, at Moses Lake to meet our 40 year long friends (from Iowa) who helped us move to Idaho in 1974.\u00a0 That trip we were quite a rig, with canoe atop and inside a station wagon, my driving and Ann as a passenger, two dogs, theirs and our Brittany, and two cats.\u00a0 John and Fred drove a large Ryder van with all our belongings, pulling their VW bus with more belongings that wouldn\u2019t fit in the van.\u00a0 There are stories with that to remain in our memories.\u00a0 Anyway, each year they come to Spokane to visit family and either drive to Ellensburg, or last year we tried this place, to which we returned.\u00a0 The visit was wonderful and the food and the trip took about 5 hours total.\u00a0 It took me a 4 hour nap to recover and then I slept all night as well.<\/p>\n
Sunday was another busy afternoon with a potluck with our Trail Riding Club.\u00a0 There were 43 people there.\u00a0 I kept down all the food from both occasions, so that hurdle is over till I have to get a refill on the Reglan.<\/p>\n
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n
John says:<\/p>\n
It is not easy keeping track of what is happening to you as you go through the labyrinth of modern medical technology and practice.\u00a0 Consider the simple suggestion of the cardiologist to wear a heart monitor for a week.\u00a0 Sometimes the expressions used are historic relicts with no connection to modern understanding of the thing being talked about (for example, sinus rhythm<\/em> \u2013 normal beating of a heart). Also, one finds old and new equipment intermixed because the technology of data recording, storage, and transmission has been advancing rapidly.<\/p>\n There is the problem of terminology.\u00a0 Nancy was fitted with a \u201cKing of Hearts\u201d unit. What\u2019s that name mean? Nothing! It is the Instromedix company\u2019s name for a device described as an event monitor.\u00a0 It is a bit like telling someone you went to the \u201cGolden Arches\u201d for lunch.\u00a0 Most everyone you know today would understand that you went to McDonald\u2019s and got a cheeseburger or some other fancy fare.\u00a0 If a person does not associate McDonald\u2019s and Golden Arches that person could only guess, maybe thinking that you went to an expensive Thai restaurant.\u00a0 Likewise a King of Hearts unit conveys no useful information.<\/p>\n So the idea of and event monitor is that leads<\/em> attached to your skin pick up electrical signals and when your heart does something rare<\/em> (key word) that it is not supposed to do, then signals just before, during, and after the event are stored in the unit for analysis at a later time.\u00a0 The unit may also have a set of beeps to alert the wearer that an event is triggering the recording of the signals.\u00a0 I should mention that the unit is about the size of a deck of cards but not as heavy.\u00a0 They do not have a lot of storage, anticipating that the events to be recorded are rare.\u00a0 With regard to such assumptions, Nancy rarely cooperates.<\/p>\n Nancy\u2019s heart has very frequent episodes of atrial fibrillation, the most common abnormal heart rhythm or cardiac arrhythmia.\u00a0 [This is partly the reason she feels tired much of the time.]\u00a0 After being fitted with the unit we headed for the car and to a Costco warehouse store. The unit recorded 2 events before we were into the car and 7 more by the time we were in the check-out line at the store.<\/p>\n Here is why that is important.\u00a0 First: The unit makes two beeps to let the wearer know it has been triggered but this one recorded silently. When recording is completed, if there is sufficient memory to record another event, the King of Hearts recorder emits a double beep and automatically restarts normal scanning mode on a loop-type scan.\u00a0 So in the first 40 minutes we heard 18 beeps.\u00a0 Second: The unit will only record 9 events and then one has to \u201cupload\u201d the data via a telephone.\u00a0 One has to call a place in New Jersey (they thought), talk to a live person, send the info, talk to the person again, reset the unit, and start again from scratch.<\/p>\n Did you notice the use of the words telephone, person, and data all involved there?\u00a0 If you are old enough and have had the experience of using an early connection to the internet you know where I am going with this.\u00a0 That\u2019s right, the unit uses an acoustic coupler of the sort found in the Novation CAT:<\/p>\n http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Novation_CAT<\/a><\/p>\n See the picture.\u00a0 Notice the cord. \u00a0We are talking Apple II \u00ae and 1980.<\/p>\n A device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information \u2013 thus a modulator-demodulator — is called a modem.\u00a0 The key idea here is modifying a sound into a digital signal so it can be sent over a copper line.\u00a0 There is that telephone cord to think about.<\/p>\n Do you still have a phone in your house that is connected with a cord to a line that physically runs from your home to the rest of the world, including New Jersey?\u00a0 If not, the King of Hearts isn\u2019t for you.\u00a0 Maybe a neighbor or friend does.\u00a0 Check to see.<\/p>\n Okay. So once the phone connection is made, one has to lay the telephone\u00a0 on to the small holes\u00a0 — see:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.fcminc.com\/KOHPatientManual.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n Scroll down to see the image of the phone handset on the unit drawing. \u00a0Here is an official company site:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.instromedix.com\/cardiac_event_recorders.htm<\/a><\/p>\n Then sounds are fed into the telephone from the unit\u2019s speaker \u2013 such as beep, de-beep beep, beep, de-beep beep, and so on . . .\u00a0for about 15 minutes per 9 recorded events.\u00a0 What an extended racket.<\/p>\n [Funny story: one web site has a comment by a person that did the above and freaked out \u2013 thought all those high pitched sounds were caused by his heart exploding or some such.\u00a0 He was too young to have heard an acoustic coupler modem.]<\/p>\n We did the arithmetic.\u00a0 With 40 minutes wear time for 9 events and 15 minutes of telephone modem noise of upload time and 7 days of monitoring we came up with \u2013 who knows?\u00a0 We called the heart center and went back for an alternative.<\/p>\n The alternative is called a Holter monitor.\u00a0 I thought the person was tripping over the word holster<\/em> and was expecting him to give Nancy a leather pouch to wear on a belt.\u00a0 Not so.\u00a0 The name comes from a fellow named Jeff Holter who (with others in about 1961) developed a back-pack size unit containing a heavy assortment of radio telemetry and tape recording equipment. \u00a0Dr. Holter invented telemetric cardiac monitoring in 1949.\u00a0 So, the Holter monitor (as well known in the halls of the heart center as McDonald\u2019s is in the halls of your kid\u2019s middle school) was attached to Nancy\u2019s body \u2013 she can tell you about that \u2013 but only for one day.\u00a0 It does a continuous recording, makes no noise, and gets mailed back in a padded envelope.\u00a0 Nice.<\/p>\n Just to pad the story some I\u2019ll direct you to the following sites.\u00a0 The first shows a horse (last image on the page) with a monitor:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.petcardiology.com\/placing-holter-monitor-leads<\/a><\/p>\n and the next:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.morgananimalhospital.com\/index.php?view=pageView&docid=6345<\/a><\/p>\n \u2026 has the story of Pico, a Miniature Schnauzer with a heart problem.<\/p>\n The story begins \u2013<\/p>\n \u201c Pico began to have episodes of weakness and collapse that seemed to worsen over . . .\u201d<\/p>\n and then \u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThe monitor revealed that Pico had a heart rate that varied from 28 beats per minute to up to 229 beats per minute.\u00a0 The normal heart rate for a dog is 70-120 beats per minute.\u00a0 There were stoppages in the heart rhythm of up to 6.85 seconds long.\u201d<\/p>\n You can read the rest with pictures.\u00a0 John<\/p>\n ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Did he think we were early-adopters at the cutting edge of technology? As mentioned Sunday, the week turned out busy again, with me, Nancy, still run down, but at least I am keeping down food.\u00a0 I spent many hours searching records of former grads that were on the alumni list at CWU marking people to … Continue reading “MONDAY — A phone with a cord?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-issues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p72iNf-9g","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":577,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions\/577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}