Return to Sunnybank Cardiopulmonary Clinic.

I was released from my charge to visit the clinic to get my 24 hour blood pressure monitor.Wendi came over to sit with her Mum.The waiting room at Sunnybank Cardiopulmonary Clinic was empty. The woman sitting behind the reception desk for the doctor with the double barrelled name was still there...She was the one that had waved me onto the other reception desk the last time...I walked straight past her and handed my referral letter to Ros. Ros could have been a contender for Real Housewives of Brisbane, or perhaps the female lead in a 1950’s film.She tapped a keyboard and peered at a computer screen.“ Are you still at Celtis St?”‘No. I’m standing here in front of you’ I thought.... but nodded.“Take a seat.”The same cane furniture was still there, the same modern art...even the ‘Gourmet Traveller’ magazines.A very thin doctor in loud pinstripe trousers kept sliding past backwards and forwards behind the desk as if he was on a conveyer belt.I didn’t have to wait long.“Mr Allen?”I got up and followed the young chap into a room.“Take a seat on the bed,” he said.“The bed?” I hadn’t anticipated a bed being involved in the procedure.It was a high bed...there were two steps up to it.I sat down.“I’m Job,” said the young chap, “ so we are fitting you with a blood pressure monitor?”I was expecting something discrete...not so...it is just like the one they use at the doctors or in hospital, the thing that wraps around your arm which is attached to the monitor by a long orange coloured rubber tube.“It will take your blood pressure every 20 minutes during the day and every hour at night. I want you to record every 2 hours on this sheet what you are doing, but don’t worry about doing it through the night. A very short description will do, even just two words. If you get up during the night you don’t have to record it.”“So I don’t have to put, ‘having a pee?’ I said.“No,” he said. “You would be surprised what some people put,” he said.“Eye opening, I bet,” I said.“Just things you can’t unread,” he frowned.He did a trial run and was pleased with how it all went. He slipped the monitor into a mini shoulder bag.“You are free to go.”“Thanks,” I said, “ See you tomorrow.”I went back to reception and Ros took $110 out of our account.I called at Woolies on the way home...we needed milk.I didn’t want to wander around the supermarket with my bright orange tube fully visible so got the monitor  out of its shoulder bag and slipped it into the arm of my t shirt, down under my t shirt and popped it in my pocket. There was a lot of orange tubing to hide so tucked some of it into my pants.I still had the big blue thing wrapped around my arm but it didn’t look too bad.Walking into Woolies I became more concerned that I had now opened myself up to the possibility of bright orange tubing popping out of my trousers and under my t shirt.....and looking like I had a colostomy bag.I made it around the store and back out to the car without any tubing popping out and just as I sat in the car it inflated on my arm.It beeps three times before inflating, then noisily inflates and beeps once when it is finished.Am I going to get any sleep tonight?