Saturday, March 19, 2005

The Work Begins... and more old updates

Ok. The only reason why I'm blogging at this moment is because my sister is still in the shower even though we've been back from dinner since 10pm and my mother and I have been practising our choir music since then. So slow I tell you that person.

Yeah. The work is starting to pile on. On Thursday and Friday I was just typing and typing on the office comp. I starting to worry about when the dancers come back from their London tour and when the new adult dance classes start. (O_O) Will be swamped with a lot of forms and a lot of money. None of which will belong to me. So sad.

In other news: I have finally learnt how to ride a bike!! *smug look* I have the bruises to prove it! Very beautiful ones on my right knee and left thigh. Not very steady yet, but I have done it!! Heh!!

Oh. And one other snippet which is actually quite old news. Only posting it now because I've been debating whether or not I should. But since it's more or less been concluded to be a passing phase, I don't see any cause of worry. Last Friday, my mother and I were playing around with her electronic home blood pressure thingymabob. And for some reason, it kept registering really low heart rates even though our blood pressure registered as normal. We decided it was going wonky and changed the batteries. Then we tried again, and true enough, my mother's vital signs were measured as normal. Mine however, were still a bit off. My blood pressure was normal enough. But my heart rate kept measuring around 45-48bpm. So as a final test of the machine's integrity, we plugged it up to my dad. And this time it actually seemed to work, so tried again on me. Same thing, heart rate was damn low but BP was normal. So BOTH my parents felt my pulse and found I had drop beats, i.e. irregular heart beats. It was all very strange so they decided that I should go and get an ECG (electro-cardiogram) reading.

The next day my dad brought me down to his old classmate's (who also happened to be his heart surgeon) clinic to borrow the ECG. The nurse stuck a lot of little suction things on my chest and clamped my wrists and ankles with what looked like giant crocodile clips. I felt like an O-level physics experiment. So lay there for a couple of minutes and got a reading. The nurse read it and was like "48... A bit low huh..." So she sent it off to Dr. Choo and I was told to wait around so that he could see me. When I went into the office, I was hooked up to another blood pressure thingy. Blood pressure was still normal but this time my heart rate measured at 41 and 43 (took twice).

Dr. Choo looked at my BP readings, looked at my ECG, scribbled down some notes and looked at me and said something to the extent of, "No chronic conditions, no serious history, kidneys ok, liver ok... Might just be inborn." I'm like "Huh?" Apparently it does happen, naturally slow hearts, in about every... 1 in 1000? Or was it 10,000? Can't really remember. But it was 1-something and definitely had more zeroes than 100. And such people can go on for a lifetime without any serious ailments or even not knowing at all. But thing is that I've never registered a slow heart rate before (in school checkups and whatnots). Either that or no one's bothered to tell me about it.

In any case, I'm supposed to go back to the clinic in another 6 weeks to take a 24-hr ECG reading. So I'm going to be attached to a portable ECG machine for 24hrs and I won't be able to bathe. (T_T) I have to go down a total of three days consecutively. One to attach the ECG to me, one to take it off, and the last to see Dr. Choo. Basically it's to see if this condition is a persisting thing or a one-off condition. Well... I haven't fainted yet and I can still go for an hour on the treadmill. So I doubt I'm going to die of a heart attack soon. Probably consumed something that slows down heart rate that particular day or something. There are such things you know, in medicines, tonics... goodness knows what else. Even constant exercise will lower your resting heart rate. Anyway. I'm FINE. No need for worry. That's why I'm actually posting this piece of news. Heh. Still have to go down in six weeks though. Just to make things official. Lalala. So fun. No bath for 24 hrs... *sob*

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