Seismic events

Imagine a seismometer, the paper moving slowly below the pen; someone brushes past the table and the pen gives a momentary jump - enough to disturb the trace but not enough to issue warnings to get out of town. That was my heart last week.

Now imagine that same someone, hands full of coffee cups tripping over the wire that runs across the floor - the wire that they’d been meaning to tape down but never got round to. Coffee flies everywhere as the unfortunate bearer stumbles into the table dragging the wire across the room. The pen is off the scale - it’s the big one. This was me on July 19th 2014.

My heart undergoes seismic events every three weeks or so (give or take a few days). Most are minor blips(!) but a few shoot up the Richter scale. There’s no obvious cause. It’s been like this since I had a catheter ablation three years ago. I’ve tried to eliminate the usual suspects; caffeine intake, alcohol intake, Prime Ministers Questions. But to no avail. Still they come. And I’m back on the coffee.

So - today, to the hospital to be instructed in the workings this device. It’s fairly self explanatory - I hold it in my right hand and press it against the left side of my chest. When I press ’start’ it takes a 30” reading of heart activity then stores the data for later analysis. I have it for the next few weeks in order to try and capture an arrhythmia. Ideally - in the interests of accurate diagnosis - a big one.

Perhaps like the volcano that’s currently sitting under the Vatnajokull Glacier in Iceland, just waiting to erupt.

If you’ve ever wondered what the Vatnajokull Glacier looks like close-up, this is from 1977. I had to lower myself into a crevasse to get the shot, unaware that an enormous volcano was lurking beneath. I must have been mad.