On Thursday I went to St. Boniface Hospital thinking I was going to an appointment to get that bomb-like device wired to me again. Remember? The thing that monitored my heart for 24 hours and came back to tell me that I had the fifth Teletubby, Wenkebach, messing up the rhythm of my heart? Well, it turned out I was getting assigned a different monitor this time. This one was an event monitor, one that I was supposed to wear (with only two electrodes instead of five) for TEN DAYS and push the button on the attached pager-like thing if I ever felt faint.

"But I only pass out as a result of pain," I said to the tech assigning me the thing. "Like a needle or if I sprain my ankle."

"Oh, well then this thing won't record anything probably," she said. "It only records for 30 seconds when you have pressed the button." Well at least we agreed that this was a dumb idea. Not her fault though. I made a note to call my doctor when I got back to verify that he had checked the right box.

I got back to the parking lot and climbed into Truck. I went to retrieve my parking card from my purse, the one that the machine had spat out when I entered the lot. I couldn't find it. I pulled out every piece of paper in my bag, cursed myself for keeping so many random pieces of paper in the damn thing, but still couldn't find it. I got out and began retracing my steps. Perhaps I had dropped it on the way in. Perhaps I had put it down at the information desk when I stopped to ask for directions.

"What do I do if I've lost my parking ticket?" I asked the woman at the info desk.

"Go see the cashier around the corner and to the right."

"What do I do if I've lost my parking ticket?" I asked the cashier.

"There is a lost ticket button. Press it."

I went to the machine inside the hospital and located the "Lost Ticket" button. The machine laughed at me and asked me to give it twenty dollars. Considering I'd parked there for only about an hour, that meant it was asking for essentially the same net wage I make, and the damn thing didn't even go through university. I reached into my purse to grab my phone to make a call up to the Cardiac Centre to see if I had left my ticket at the front desk there when I checked in.

I didn't have to make that call though, didn't even have to pick up my phone, because right there was the parking ticket. Ta Da! Wasn't that a fun game?

I fed the card to the machine. Machine wrinkled its nose and spat the thing out. "Unreadable" it said. I tried again. Same results. FINE! I took the card and headed back to the parking lot knowing I could try the machine out there. Apparently the machines are in some kind of cahoots with one another because it wouldn't take the card either. I pressed the "Assistance" button.

"Hello?"

"The machine won't take my card," I said.

The voice inside the box asked me what time I came in and said a few other muffled things that I could only guess were somewhere along the lines of, "would you like to Super Size that?" I just kept repeating myself until finally the voice said, "the gate is open". I looked. So it was. I was free! Literally, free; I didn't have to pay for the parking at all.

I wore the device all day on Thursday, right up until about nine thirty when I changed into pajama pants for the evening. I set off with making Friday's lunch, a salad, with lettuce, chunks of cucumber and yellow pepper, and a tomato. I added half a can of tuna mixed with some salad dressing for protein. Finished with the preparations, I started cleaning up. I grabbed the red handled can opener and cried out when somehow the pinkie finger of my right hand got caught between the handles, up near the business end. I released my finger from the grips of the tool and looked at it. A small cut. A bit of blood. A lot of pain. Oh wait, I was feeling kinda woozy. SHIT! I thought. I'm not wearing the device!

I ran around the house looking for the gizmo. Not on my bed, not on the chair. My finger was now dripping. I ran to the bathroom to put it under cold water. Still feeling weird, I wrapped some toilet paper around it and skidded to the living room to lay down on the floor with my feet up in the air. I felt better. I got up and saw the monitor on the table, in a different place than where I had glanced the first time. I grabbed the pieces I needed to stick to me to stick to the wires, hooked myself all up, took a breath, stared at my bloody finger and waited to see if dizziness or nausea would over come me.

Nadda. I felt fine. Of course.

I'm not wearing the thing. It's stupid. I realize, as one who is forever smacking her limbs into hard surfaces and breaking her skin open by way of knives and other sharp objects being in the right place at the wrong time, I could very likely have another episode, such as I did on Thursday night. But the thing is a pain in the tuckas, and I'm still quite self-conscious about walking around in public looking like I'm wired to explode. I'll happily wear it the next time I go for a needle or blood work, but this is just plain dumb.