For the shortest while yesterday I felt like a spring chicken. I was waiting to be fitted with one of those miniature sphigmos that monitors your blood pressure over 24 hours, the youngest patient there by at least ten years, and a mere probationer when it came to blood pressure stories. One woman claimed to have had a diastolic reading of 200mm. I think I have to check that out. I mean, 200mm? And she was still breathing.

Now the thing about the 24 hour monitor is that the cuff inflates every 15 minutes and takes a reading. Day and night it keeps right on squeezing and after just one hour wearing the darned thing I knew I wouldn't be getting much sleep. So I prepared to move into the spare room. Mr F was upset. He thinks he doesn't sleep well when I'm not at his side. But as I pointed out, he wouldn't sleep well with my reading light blazing all night. Then there would be all the noise; pages being turned, tea being slurped. And maybe the occasional whimper as the cuff squeezed.

Actually, he slept just fine. When I tiptoed to the kitchen at 1am he was doing his comatose starfish impersonation.
I slept too, but not very much. And then this morning I couldn't even take a shower. So when we all showed up to turn in our monitors I sensed I'd lost some of that youthful edge of yesterday. I looked as grey and seedy as the rest of them. Knowing little smiles were exchanged. The fleeting brotherhood of a bunch of strangers who'd all had a bad night.

As she was unstrapping me from the monitor the nurse asked me how I'd coped, but before I could answer she found some pretty eloquent evidence: a fragment of chocolate chip cookie trapped down the front of my vest.
The shame of it. Still, it could have been worse. Imagine if I wore a double D cup. Imagine if there were such a thing as an All Night Chinese Take Away in this town. She'd have found a couple of pork dumplings and a fortune cookie down there. At the very least.