The Zero Pulse Confusion

Weighed in today at 17 st 6.5.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're clutching your brows and weeping disconsolately, aren't you?

Well, fine, but before you do, let's look at some facts here. What we have noticed in prior Disappearing experiments is that if we go and do some big chunky bit of exercise immediately prior to weighing in, we lose on average 1.5 pounds off the "real" weigh-in figure. And as luck would have it, last Thursday morning, prior to the weigh-in, I went for an uberwalk with Ma - which means the reading of 17st 4.25 was probably, in all honesty, supposed to be 17st 5.75. This morning, I didn't walk or exercise, as there were too many things to do and get on with. Which would mean that I've put on about .75 of a pound this week - which given the slightly more erratic approach to exercise I've managed this week, is altogether not as bad as it at first appears.

Went to see a cardiologist last night.
As ya do.

I've had a couple of vaguely fluttery tachycardic moments in the last year, so decided to at least see...wwwwwwhat the fuck was going on.

Turns out: Buggerall.

Officially, Buggerall is going on. My blood pressure's perfect, my heart, "as a pump", is perfectly fine, according to the consultant cardiologist.

That was an odd phrase, I thought. It's perfect "as a pump". It rather begs the question of as what it might be less perfect. A Nissan Micra, possibly.

There was one very peculiar moment though. He tried to take my pulse.
"Hmm," he said, in the kind of rich, fruity Welsh accent of which a thousand stereotypes are made.
"Sorry to tell you this..." he said, sounding admittedly, genuinely sorry (this was actually a private appointment - I love the NHS, but in terms of sounding like they actually give a fuck, clearly, you get what you pay for...).
"...but you have no pulse."

"Well..." I said. "That's inconvenient. I mean, you never know when one of them is going to come in handy..."
In my head of course, the rant went on. "I mean, come the zombie apocalypse, how are the other human beings going to identify me as one of their own? Other than the fact that I'm not ripping off the top of their skulls to get at their pink juicy brains, obviously...A pulse would come in dead handy then..."

He looked at me through his expensive spectacles, as though for a moment he suspected I might have been smoking something obscure before wandering in to see him.
"Tell me," he said. "Have you ever had an angiogram?"
"Yes!" I gasped, like a mark picked from a studio audience by a magician when he reveals my personally-signed playing card stuck in the middle of a melon. "How did you know?"
"Did they go in through your wrist?" he persevered.
"Yes, they did!" I said, almost ready to burst into spontaneous applause. He sniffed.
"That's why you have no pulse in your right hand," he explained. "If anyone ever tries to take your pulse in that hand, and says they feel one, get out of there, they don't know what they're doing..."

All this was new information to me. I wasn't even aware it was legal to walk around without a pulse. But apparently, I've been walking about without one in my right wrist for about two years now. And I have to say, I'm that desperate to be special, I feel rather proud of that. Sure, I might have a bog standard blood group (naturally, I was hoping for something incredibly rare and useful - you know, the kind of blood group that marks one out for greatness, and which is useful to the tiniest of premature babies and suchlike, but nope - cattle-grade peasant blood, whooshing around this scruffbag body of mine), but I only have a pulse in one wrist - howd'ya like me now?! Thinking about it, maybe, come the zombie apocalypse, I can broker peace between the factions - I'm neither alive nor undead, I'm kinda...half-and-half...

The thing that worries me is that back when I was having the angiogram, I had to specify that I wanted it in the wrist. They were all set to go in through the groin. Which makes you wonder - if they had (and indeed, in cases to this day where they do)...would I have ended up with, say, no blood flow to one ball? Would all the sperm on the right side be sitting round shivering, huddling together going "Bloody Hell, I know we like it cold, but this is ridiculous!" When getting...intensively friendly...with my wife, would only one side of me get the increased bloodflow demanded in order to be even remotely useful? I mean, would my dick look like it had had a stroke?

The doctor peered at me wearily through those expensive lenses, as if able to read my mind, and sighed.
"You've got bloodflow going to your hand through another vessel on the other side," he explained.
"Yeah - so you say! But does that explain why I've always got cold hands these days?" I asked.
He sighed again.
"No," he said, focusing on the money.

I've looked at my hand in an entirely different light since last night. Feel like it deserves a special glove or something, to preserve its zero-pulse status. Almost feel like it should now come with its own tourniquet, just make doubly sure of its pulse-purity, but y'know...
...you can go too far...