If you know someone who annoys you slightly, and you’re looking for a gag gift that plays on their latent obsessive compulsive disorder, damn if I haven’t gone and bought myself one. Because its inherent weaknesses become its strengths, someone with a marketing sense could transform it into the Patek Phillipe of the fibrillated.
I have a history of hyperlipidemia, Greco-Latin for motherfucker’s blood is fat, and have a disposition that’s one part Jack Nicholson and one part Jack Nicholson in “The Shining”. So I figured I ought to start monitoring my blood pressure.
Not that it would do much good. A heart attack or stroke out here and it’s over, or should be. I don’t want to burden my wife with a wheeled feces production unit for several reasons, not the least of which is an internal brain hemmorhage, while horrible, has to be less horrible than having your head staved in with a brick. Not that she would do that. I think.
Ever since I first strapped this sucker on and it read 175 over 120, I’ve fixated on it. I’ve already run through three sets of batteries and learned to average three readings in my head almost spontaneously.
The instructions tell you to take readings at various times of the day, to get a more accurate “blood pressure profile”, but they didn’t have to tell me that. It’s nearly a damned accessory.
It’s like a video game, too. I’ve already scored the IHB warning (irregular heartbeat) after chasing one of the goddamn sheep away from the mules’ feeding trough (280/140!).
Eventually my wife says “Let me see that damned thing!”puts it on, and gets a reading of 160 /90. She doesn’t have high blood pressure. In fact hers runs low. She has the resting pulse of a fresh corpse. When she had foot surgery several years back, the beeping machine kept telling the doctors they were losing her, and as she slipped under the anesthesia she had to try and tell them she wasn’t dying but she usually clocked in around 40bpm.
“That’s a lot of batteries for pure bullshit.” My wife didn’t have to say, but projected clearly, with a clever use of facial muscles.
So my wrist monitor is woefully inaccurate. Big fucking hairy deal. I still check it compulsively, where my wife can’t hear it inflating.
rurritable 
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March 8, 2012 at 10:08 am
Minnie
Oh, I understand. When higher BP became my new norm, I bought a cuff and immediately became obsessed. Am now less compulsive – usually. Read that the wrist cuffs are wildly inaccurate. Who knows, maybe your wife’s BP is really off the charts high.
March 8, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Donna Baker
Same thing happened to us. My husband usually has bp around 110/65. He was sick so we used cuff to check bp and it was 240/130; we changed batteries, still high. Went to emergency room, but it never went so high. We went out and bought new digital arm monitor.