I'm riding in on the bus this morning, and this woman is talking to the driver. The driver is talking about how she went to have a cardiac stress test yesterday, apparently because she has mitral valve prolapse. In any case, the woman behind the driver is asking what normal resting pulse rate is (it is between 60 and 80 beats per minute), and the driver answers that she doesn't know. So this guy behind the lady pipes up and says “It's 120 over 80.” Now… coming from a layperson, this wouldn't be a bad thing. But this guy was wearing scrubs and a stethoscope. So, the lady turns around and says - “No, not blood pressure… pulse.” And the guy insists that the bottom number in the “120 over 80″ statement IS the pulse. I'm sitting there biting my tongue, because I SO want to say something. Anyhow, this woman, it turns out, has a resting pulse rate of 100, and wants to know if this is good. Dr. Scrubs Stethoscope, from the seat behind, says: “Yeah, that's actually better than 120/80, because it's 100… so you're doing great.” I really should have told her to talk to her doctor… I'm no doc, but at 100bpm, that's not normal, or maybe, for her, it is… only a real doc can tell.
So the conversation progresses, and the driver proceeds to tell the tachycardic passenger about Arthur Ashe. Mr. Ashe was a very famous tennis player who died a few years back. Apparently the driver feels he died of heart problems (he died of complications from AIDS), and cites the fact that he had a resting pulse rate of 48 as a contributing factor to his death.
Wow… the things you hear.
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