The Great Off-The-Cuff Catastrophe

It seems we've had an untimely casualty in the travel gear department. Just yesterday, the upper-arm, all-in-one blood pressure monitor which Jay and I have come to rely on suddenly lost its will to inflate. The convenient cuff has officially given up the ghost.

We truly loved that little unit. It fit neatly into a small box and was absolutely brilliant when packing. To have it fail after just a bit more than a year and a half is definitely disappointing. Still, looking on the bright side, I suppose I should feel lucky that it didn't decide to stop functioning two days into our month in Morocco, which kicks off this Wednesday!

Today’s mission involved heading uptown to hunt down a replacement. Strangely, nobody carried a similar all-in-one unit. The only compact options available were those smaller wrist monitors, which medical professionals generally do not recommend. When one uses an upper-arm cuff, one is measuring directly at the level of the heart. With a wrist monitor, you can get significant differences in pressure depending on exactly where your wrist happens to be resting.

After striking out at Walmart and one pharmacy, we finally picked up a new unit at London Drugs. The Bios-labeled device is smaller than most standard options out there, but still not as compact or easy to store since we're back to dealing with a tube. It'll have to do. Jay and I are quite religious about taking our morning and evening readings. In fact, I have the statistics to prove it: at least a decade's worth of data that I've dutifully logged into my Android app. Let's just hope this new machine keeps the metrics flowing without developing any inflation drama.