Echo Stress Test

Eight months ago, my Newcastle (John Hunter Hospital) specialist ordered a stress test to find out how my health is travelling. I had it yesterday over about 90 minutes, during which time I was quizzed about lifestyle, exercise routine, weighed, and had a whole lot of electrodes strapped on me. I was then ordered on to a bicycle and watched my heart-beat as I pedalled faster and faster. The team of one doctor and his assistant also took before and after resting measurements.

After all that, Dr Gary Baker broke the good news. It appears that my physical condition is roughly that of someone aged 44, not 64. So, it looks like most of you will have to put up with me for a bit longer than I was expecting. Those results will be passed on to Dr James Leitch (appropriate name for a doctor, eh!) at John Hunter, and Dr Ron Grant, my Armidale GP. When you get news like that, it's worth the A$750 (375 GBP) cost, although I'll get 85% of that back on medical insurance.

Oh well, I'll get back to writing those three journal articles due by next Monday, having spent the morning researching a fourth!! Silly me. I might croak of a brain aneurysm trying to conceptualise 43 behavioural traits in 4 dimensional space, not to mention tossing 60+ variables into the air modelling the global economy. And then I'm trying to explain how those processes relate to quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's uncertainty and Schrodinger's cat. In case you think I'm already falling off my perch, try looking up Shrodinger's cat on Google. The poor animal was remarkably alive and dead at the same time. By the way, my psychological incursion manages to conflate letting the mind wander, unfocusing the brain, playing a musical instrument, horsing around and living in a blue environment - plenty of that around here. If you'd like, I'll explain how these things come together and relate to the philosophy of Friedrich Neitzsche. It occurs to me that I might be stark raving mad, so I'll log off and go and commune with my psychologist colleagues - we're in the same School!

AS