186/120 was normal

 

 

This is the 'one thing', leaving the house soon. It's a blood pressure monitor. Husband used it frequently. 

I don't know why some items have been harder to part with than others. The clothes went immediately. As did so many of the books, because I couldn't open the door. 

Planks of wood, I reused. Electronic kit and strange gadgetry all made steady departures. Stored floor to ceiling, some items - like the dial-up modem in an elegant oak box - made it to museums, for which I'm strangely pleased. Forty meters of shelving I gave to the man down the road. His wife now won't look at me if I pass her in the street. 

The reel-to-reel was the last Big Thing to go. It went, ungraciously on my part. I felt guilty about that. I left this seven hundred pounds worth of ex-BBC tape technology on someone's drive with a 'take it and fuck off' face. I don't know why exactly; I think resentment that it was more important than me might be something. But I blew up his computer by accident, and I felt that solved a problem. The carpets, all gone to the skip. The table, Indian rug, both to his sister. The wooden Ganesh, sold. As with the Mexican cat that no-one liked. I still use the library desk because I love it, and I steampunked the broken 1940s swivel chair, and use it daily. The Hong Kong evidence, I quietly keep. One day, it might redeem me, or damn me.

Anyway, the blood pressure monitor. It fell into the category, 'might be useful'.

It was too, for about a week. I had this horrible experience at the hospital as 2025 ended, kicking me properly up the backside with a departing December gift of peritonitis symptoms. While I was laid slab-like, talking about my inability to wee, the nurse observed I had low pressure too. That's unusual because apparently the very sight of a white coat normally elevates it to Hypertension Stage 1.

So I started using this handy machine at home, pumping blood out my arm and squeezing my limb half to death. From Day One it returned alarmingly high readings. After Day Six, I couldn't take any more of the anxiety. I took my body part off to the surgery to have it properly gauged with a calibrated machine. Which returned a reading of normal. And the day after. And the day after that.

Now this is out the house. If it's not collected (for free, with story, listing of its failure, and general cautions) then it has an appointment with the recycling depot. It's lived here, long enough.