Medical Equipment To You, Gizmos To Me
DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS where the Bluebonnets are blooming and some people say that I’m “Blooming” too.
We are down in Texas visiting with family and taking care of business. It is nice that we can stay with Dawn’s mother in the Family home. Being 97 years old makes it pretty obvious that there are medical issues. With medical issues come all sorts of nifty medical Gizmos. Her Home Healthcare people don’t like that I refer to their devices as Gizmos, but that’s what they are – high tech, clever, and wonderful Gizmos. I guess that is why I am not their favorite person.
Many of these things have been around in one form or another for a long time, but they have been updated and are beginning to have similarities to the things used by the doctors on Star Trek.
Even the simple thermometer, which I’ve always thought of as something I had to stick under my tongue for two minutes, has been super-cool updated into a wand that you just have to hold against your head for a few seconds. That is one way cool Gizmo. It is so simple to use. It makes me want to take the temperature of other things. That can of soda in the fridge is 38°. The toaster is off the charts hot. The dog growled when he saw me coming and refused to cooperate. It was then that I had to give back the thermometer.
Taking someone’s Blood Pressure in the doctor’s office involves having the Nurse, Nurse
Practitioner, or whatever title is appropriate, squeeze the little rubber thing until the cuff on my arm turns blue. That’s not the case at home anymore. No, to take the BP at home today is very Gizmo-ish. The obligatory cuff still goes on the arm, but sometime on the forearm. Once the cuff is on somewhere all that is required is to push one button and sit back…until your arm turns blue (They haven’t solved that part yet). My Mother-in-law has one. I have one at home too. Hers is better than mine. Hers has a serious sounding name and silently does its job. Mine came from Amazon and is called “Mr. Aneurism.” I don’t have a lot of faith in it. I left hers alone. I didn’t want to get her Home Healthcare person mad at me…madder at me. They know ways to hurt me that wouldn’t leave a mark.
There is one other Gizmo that I got to test out – the little finger-clippy thing that somehow measures how much oxygen you are ingesting. How my finger tells them that I don’t know. I’m not sure that they aren’t just kidding us all.
I’m just sayin’…
While Science and Technology has made some remarkable progress I am still a little skeptical sometimes. It’s like those “ANSWER TEN QUESTIONS AND LEARN HOW LONG YOU’LL LIVE” surveys on Facebook. The questions may be good, but the extrapolation falls apart. I took one of those on Facebook and it said that I had been dead for 8 years.
I refused to accept that and kept on living…although I did lie down and take a nap.
Down the Hall on Your Left 
Sounds like you are having fun playing with your MIL’s gizmos.
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Moi?
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