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Measure for Measure

I suppose I should have known what to expect. I had in my mind something about the size and weight of  a MacBook Air that would hang -or worse, be taped- to my chest. People would look away sympathetically, happy they had escaped the inquisitive fingers of the Reaper for now. But disguised or not, they would know; I would be categorized, filed somewhere as the ‘old man who probably smoked and sat around evenings watching Fox news instead of going bowling with the guys.’

I thought that my years of running and hiking would spare my last years the indignities meted out to those who spent their leisure time eating fried foods and crushing empty beer cans with their fat-encrusted hands. But alas, Age spares no one -at least not the ones who are year-collectors like me… Or people like Freddy who never made it through an entire cup of coffee without at least one bathroom visit.

“We’re like old houses, G; things wear out under and over the sink for us guys,” Fred assured me the other day with a twinkle in his newly cataract-less eyes. “Starts with our prostrates for some of us…”

“Prostates,” I corrected him.

He rolled his eyes and then continued, undeterred by what he considered to be a minor excusable pronunciation anomaly. “… And by then, if it hasn’t already, the chest starts complaining and they put you on blood pressure medicine and scratins…”

“Statins,” I corrected him again.

“Whatever! Things get old and rusty -you’ve gotta expect that when you reach 70 like you.”

“I’m eighty!” Fred was losing more than his pronunciation, I realized with a sigh. He was in his sixties when I’d retired and we had met in the Food Court of the local Mall. Over the years, we’d become regulars -his wife had died; mine had left… Same thing in the end, I suppose. But Fred had turned to food and TV to pass the time and I had… well, I had turned to exercise with the same dedication for filling in the all too apparent gaps.

The other day, I complained to him about my doctor insisting I wear a Holter Monitor for 24 hours  because of an episode of chest tightness on a recent run. No pain, usual route, never happened before… “Diagnostic overreach,” I started to explain to Freddy, but his face turned wrinkly and he held up his hand.

“At eighty, the insulation on the wiring in an old heart like yours is probably wearing away.” Freddie had been an electrician in his day; he retired after Judy died. “It can short circuit at any time, eh? And you never know when, or if it’ll happen.”

He was right, of course. Even the best equipment ages with time and use. Still, it was hard to accept that despite my best attempts to keep it healthy, it could fail.

“So what you do…” Doctor Freddy decided to give me medical advice about how to make sure the Holter Monitor actually measured something important. “…you relax while they’re putting on the halter so they get it right…”

“Holter!” Having to continually correct his words did not raise my confidence in his advice, I have to admit.

“Huh?”

“It’s a Holter monitor, not a halter: that’s what you put on a horse, isn’t it?”

He shrugged as if it was of no discernable importance to the directions he was about to give me. “After they put the… the thing on your chest, you make sure you give it a good trial, eh?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you exercise like stink for the 24 hours you’re wearing it, so any abnormalities of a hard-working heart will show up. I mean, there’s no sense just wandering around in the Mall or wherever. Ya gotta really exercise.”

I nodded my head at that. “But, I don’t want the buttons from the machine they stick on my skin to come off if I sweat, or anything…” I pulled out the instructions that came with the appointment form. “No shower when I’m wearing it, even on the morning I’m returning it; no cream or stuff on my skin either. It says I can’t get the electrode stickies wet.”

He thought about that for a moment. “Okay, how about you just go for a long, long walk -not a stroll, not a wander, but sort of like a speed walk. Only you do it for a long distance just to put the halter through its paces. Show it who has the reins…”

Freddy always gets carried away with his metaphors, but I nodded my approval and didn’t correct ‘halter’ so he’d know I was taking him seriously.

The next day, the technician showed me the apparatus -a tiny thing the size and weight of one of those old iPods- and glued the electrodes to my skin. She assured me I could exercise, and to make sure that nothing would come loose, she wrapped a kind of elastic lattice over my head and upper body with tight little holes for my arms. It was sort of how I imagine a bra would feel, but I didn’t say anything to her about that so she wouldn’t get mad and tighten it any more than she already had.

I tried it out by walking the 5 K route from the lab to the Food Court for a coffee, and then really stressed it with a similar length fast-walk along the seawall to a bus stop. I kept feeling for the electrodes through my shirt to make sure they were still glued in place, but I mean nothing could move very far under the brassiere she’d jailed me in.

The hardest part of the test was not so much sleeping on the hard little bumps, but waking up early and realizing that without being able to take a shower I was way ahead of time for my lab appointment. So much so in fact, that I caught a much too early bus to get back to the lab and then realized I’d better get off early and walk the rest of the way. I turned on the GPS of my phone to see how far it would be, and it clocked out at 10 plus K. by the time they took the Holter off.

Even sweating as much as I was, the removal of the electrodes stuck to my skin was like pulling band aides off a wound -that plus ripping the hair growing around them… Still, I was proud of myself and couldn’t wait to tell Freddy about it the next day.

He was just coming back from the washroom when I saw him heading for our usual table. I could tell that’s where he’d been because he always checked his zipper several times just to be sure.

“So, how’d it go, G?” he said, setting his cup firmly on the table to claim ownership when he saw a group of young women heading for it. “The Halter stay in place?”

I was too excited to correct him, so I just nodded. “I really put it through its paces like you suggested… All in all, I figure I put around 20 K on it before I gave it back.”

He sighed and then plastered a smile on his face. “I lasted less than an hour with mine, I think…”

When I looked surprised that he hadn’t told me he’d worn one, he shrugged. “The lab is in the hospital so I figured I should try a fast walk in the area just in case they needed to adjust it. Anyway, I fainted in front of the Emergency department so they found me right away.

“Apparently I’d had a severe episode of alien fabulation, so the doctors told me I was lucky I was so close to the hospital…”

“I think you mean atrial fibrillation,” I said, and rolled my eyes, politely so I didn’t seem to be making fun of the medical condition.

He shrugged. “Whatever I had, the docs said they were able to diagnose and treat it right away by reading my halter.” He produced a sad smile. “I’m glad I wore it, you know.”

Freddy always has a way of making me feel healthier, somehow…

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