I felt like sharing this from my day today. Bit of a story but I’ll get to the point quick as I can.
I’ve had the kind of day where I’ve had a lot to do but also a lot of excitement to contain - some of it Christmas related and some of it not; I was under a bit of pressure to get something sorted before the Christmas rush and it being Sunday tomorrow meant I really only had today, but if I nailed this thing the payoff would be seriously cool. I had several (non-medical) appointments to keep to, the most important of which was this afternoon at 4PM. At 2:40PM I was ready with everything in preparation for my 4PM thing, apart from a document I had to collect from a mile and a half down the road.
So I decided to run there to get it. On days like this I’m like a puppy that just escaped from its carry-cage and I decided that would cool my head in the way I needed. I can do a three mile run in around 20 minutes when fully fit, but at the moment I’m at about 21:30, and I decided I had time to go steady rather than gun the pace, and I’d still have time to shower, get changed, grab a quick bit of food and get out the door and be on time for 4PM.
When I got in from the run and warmdown I knew I’d done the right thing, then a cool thing occurred to me: what if I nailed today, and then when thinking back on the story at that moment I could say my timekeeping was so good that ‘I even found 3 minutes to give my heart a quick check with the stethoscope after running’ ?
So after checking I really did have time, I did it - stripping off my sweaty t-shirt, quickly towling down to get rid of some of the sweat, and self-steth’d in front of my bedroom mirror. Right then, my apex beat at the mitral valve was sounding especially strong and clear, still working hard but dropped down from the running pace. I timed it with a stopwatch and was at 135BPM, and then just stood there listening to myself for another couple of minutes thinking ‘You’ve GOT THIS today!’ and enjoyed having a semi at the sound of myself, then for some reason I thought of someone playing a Mom-figure or similar to tween-me (when I first truly discovered how much I liked stethoscopes) and saying ‘Woah, your heart’s pounding there kiddo!’ in an encouraging way that was like praise for how hard I’d been working to get fit, and hell yeah, fully hard in no time.
I didn’t have time to take care of business or keep going with the stethoscope after that - I needed that shower and I was really hungry too, then it was get out of the door time, but seriously, I felt like the boss of everything right then. I got the thing I needed to done and sorted, and walking home I thought about how good it was that in a day where I had serious adult shit to take care of, I’d made just a small amount of time for medfet-related self-care and tapped into kid-me for just long enough to clear my head a little further.
Anyone else ever used their love of auscultation and steth’s in this sort of way, keeping things cool and collected with that headspace while you’re busy? I’ve honestly never quite done it like this before and I’ll definitely try it again at some point when it’s needed, although you know what they say, there’s no time quite like the first!