What’s Up Doc?
My Holter Test results came back yesterday. Twenty-one faxed pages of technical acronyms that read more like spy code than medical analysis. In my own technology career it was easy to slip into techno-ease as our microcosm revolved around cryptic initials that at times we ourselves had long forgotten what they stood for. Back in the 90’s when we were installing ATM (asynchronous transfer mode: network switching technology) all over campus, the community was eager with bank cards poised to withdraw funds from their computer CD slots! It’s something about job security I suspect. If no one understands what it is that you do, than no one can do your job. However in my department we focused on demystifying technology. We broke things down into archetypes appropriate for our audience. Something the medical field could rally around as well.
However nebulous the medical cryptogram, Google to the rescue! Whatever did people do before Ask Jeeves, Yahoo Answers, Dogpile or Wikipedia which is the number one term paper resource used by junior high students nationwide – but that’s a topic for another shaggy dog chronicle.
A growing population of google-condriacs armed with stacks of heresy flood doctor’s waiting rooms each day expecting to match wits with the Hippocratic Oath itself. If you are lucky, your doctor’s office has recently upgraded their in-house network. No more paper files and illegible diagnostic notes. Your physician carries a wireless tablet that contains not only your entire medical record from the point of conception in the back seat of that 58′ Chevy behind the school, but it can quick link to your financial assets to determine the total extent of care you can afford.
So with keyboard in hand I hacked away to make sense of my heart. As an expert layperson, I already had a leg up on the PVCs, PACs, SVTs and the occasion Atrial Run. But after all the codes were cracked and the waves analyzed, what did it really mean in terms of the quality or quantity of the life span of this body mind organism? As my friend is fond of saying, none of us are getting out alive. We can test and ablate to our heart’s confound. But it is the mind only that we are trying to appease. This body was not created by this mind, and it has no servitude to the me-thought that pretends authorship and ownership.
