Speaking of health news, here's something on atrial fibrillation which explains it and describes what they can do about it now. It caught my eye because this was one of the reasons I was in hospital for a week lately.
They now have me on one of the new blood-thinning medications to treat this, and I thought I'd pass this along for anyone else who might be interested in it.
These new monitors they mention are an improved version of the Holter Monitor, which now can communicate by telemetry back to a central receiver to display your real-time readings on a panel in the cardiac ward's main station, and also display it on other panels around the hallways of it. I imagine a similar method is used for those worn outside the hospital. These devices can be set to trigger an alarm if the actions they detect go beyond predetermined limits, and
then help is dispatched.
When you're walking around wearing one, the traces from your heartbeats are often quite a jumble of just 'hash' or artifacts as they call them, and to get a good reading, you need to stop moving around and stay still for a few moments,
but these are marvelous pieces of technology, and are worn 24 hours a day when required. There's a problem though, if you want to have a shower, because you need to have them remove the five or six detector pads attached to your chest around the heart, so you can take off the little pouch containing the device, which must not be allowed to get wet.
Hi Ray,
ReplyDeleteFor the benifit of your non Canandian readers it would be interesting to see how much your stay in yhe Hospital cost. They would probably have no idea how little that cost you say campared to the USA health system,with the same kind of care.
Yes, Pete, I think you're right. I don't know how much per day it costs to have someone in the kind of care I was receiving, because as you know our health care coverage covers it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I walked out of there, the doctors and nurses wished me well,
and told me to get right back there if I had any further difficulties, and nobody even mentioned the bill. All they handed me was a list of six prescriptions to get filled so
I can continue my medications.
Hi there, Ray...how are you doing, my friend? I'm hoping that you're feeling better, these days? A big hug for you! Don't be a stranger; send me an e-mail, and keep me posted. :-)
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