Security blanket…

For the last five weeks I’ve had an electronic security blanket. Far away, wherever Philips giant data center is located, computers monitored the output from their Mobile Cardiac Outpatient Telemetry (MCOT) devices, and their algorithm has been plugging along keeping a remote eye on my ticker. 

The only feedback this little wonder device gave me was that occasionally one of the leads came unstuck and needed to be reaffixed. I’ve just been operating under the assumption that if there was something catastrophic happening, someone might have called or cut the testing short. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but in the absence of clear guidance, I’ve created my own. 

I hate to admit it, but I felt just a little bit better with this little bit of plastic and silicon chips quietly doing its thing in the background.

The fact is, these last two months have been the only time in my adult life I’ve honestly been bothered by living alone. The only difference from June 28th to today is the fact that I now have evidence that something could go horribly wrong rather than simply knowing it as a purely intellectual exercise. That evidence is enough to leave me feeling decidedly uneasy now that my security blanket has gone away. 

Taken as a whole, the last two and a half months have been disconcerting in a way I’d haven’t previously encountered. I don’t know that there’s anything to be done about it other than to accept that I’ll now have a new nagging thought in the back of my head for the foreseeable future. Moving someone in just to make sure I haven’t accidentally dropped dead as I go about my day-to-day activities, feels like it’s probably a wildly excessive overreaction… but don’t think the thought and a hundred other derivative ideas haven’t been banging around my head this weekend. 

Anyway, I kind of miss my security blanket.