I had a heart monitor on for a month

From around mid-December to mid-January, I had a heart monitor on. It was attached to my chest on the left side by a patch. I had to charge the monitor every few days and the phone that came with it every single night. I would also replace the patch that attaches the heart monitor to my chest every few days.

The only good thing that came out of having the heart monitor on - other than having my heart activity tracked - was being able to skip security lines occasionally. Apparently having a heart monitor means that you shouldn’t go through metal detectors, so I sometimes had a special line or extra test instead. Other than that, the heart monitor just caused me stress.

I hated waiting for the heart monitor to connect to the phone. There’s something uniquely sad about being alone and sitting on the bedroom floor at 1am wanting so badly to sleep but the dang heart monitor hasn’t connected with the phone yet. It just beeps away, lights flashing, as you press the monitor into your skin, hoping at some point there’s enough contact for it to stop complaining.

One time, one of the heart monitor lights wouldn’t turn on. It was the battery indicator, so I couldn’t tell if it was really charging when it was plugged into the wall. I called customer service. They sent me a replacement, but in the meantime, I still had a constantly beeping device.

“What do I do with the heart monitor? It’s still beeping.”

“…seal it in the box it came in and throw it in the trunk of your car until you can drop it off at the post office tomorrow morning. Whatever you can do.”

I ended up enveloping it with a thick winter coat and shoving it in the back of my closet until the next morning so that I could sleep.

I joked to my friends that it was like a clingy boyfriend who was worried about your heart at all times. During that month, I would feel for the heart monitor through my shirt occasionally and be reminded of the fragility of my health. It did something to me psychologically - I think - to be so aware of the biological machinery in my chest keeping me alive. All of a sudden, it felt as if my heart was doing its best to keep me alive, and that this “alive-ness” I had was actually a miracle that I was taking for granted all this time.

Thankfully, the doctor didn’t find anything unusual in the months-long study of my heart. And I’m thankful that I got to have a heart monitor on at all.