Editing 2581: Health Stats

[[Cueball|Cueball's]] has a smartwatch that tells him a new health statistic. It is a new watch or a newly discovered feature.

It seems to monitor the volume of blood currently in his left hand (specifically the one the watch is being worn on the wrist of, implying it tracks the inflow and outflow and maintains a running tally) and conveys this quantity in milliliters (ml). It also tracks other stats like his pulse, as seen later, but this is not what currently interests Cueball. Instead, he studies the blood volume information and finds it changing from moment to moment. This may be from a combination of his pulse (misaligned to the frequency of the updates) or the vertical position and attitude of his hand (he subtly changes the hand's position from panel to panel). It could just be inaccuracies in the data, an issue with all scientific instruments but more so for consumer devices used without practiced expertise - it is unlikely he has strapped the measuring device tight enough onto his wrist to give scientifically consistent results, even with such slight arm movements as he makes.

He reports his thoughts on this to someone off-panel, who is heard replying to all his comments. At first, Cueball just voices the assumption that the small change is normal and accepts the movement away from a number he had no reason to disbelieve as realistic. But then two measurements in a row both increases. Although all the changes are slight, compared to the magnitude of the numbers themselves, this freaks him out. He may be [[605: Extrapolating|extrapolating these two data points]] into the future - if this rather selective trend continues, his hand may explode from its ever-increasing volume of blood. Either this, or Cueball noticed that the variation in the first three data points was ±0.025, but the final variation suddenly surpasses this level by ten times this range, massively redefining his evolving expectations.

For whatever reason he becomes anxious, a consequence of this is that his pulse also begins to rise, as also documented by the watch. This could simultaneously increase his blood pressure (not noted as being another monitored statistic) and in turn causing another rise in the volume of blood in his hand. Knowledge of the pulse increase makes him even more alarmed, which will cause a positive feedback loop at least in the short term.

 

Just before his anxiety reaches breaking point, his off-panel friend begins to tell him to stop looking at the watch all the time but is interrupted mid-sentence by Cueball actually freaking out. This final outbreak causes his off-screen companion to tease him by saying that "We will treasure your memory", thus joking that Cueball will soon die from the blood loss when his hand explodes.  

This is likely meant to parody the tendency of people to monitor minute details of their own health, pandered to by possibly misguided developments in personal meditech, without having a clear idea of what any of the data means. This is arguably much more common today with health devices readily available, which can give the average person data about their own body but often don't offer useful context. Cueball is apparently sufficiently fixated on data that apparent changes to any metric causes him to panic. He doesn't know what the blood volume of his hand means for his health, or even whether it's a useful metric, yet he obsesses over perceived trends in the data.  The irony is that his very focus causes a more important metric (his pulse rate) to elevate. This may be intended to suggest that excessive fixation on one's own health can cause elevated anxiety. Ironically, this stress can potentially be more harmful than the things that the person has become upset about.

:[Cueball is looking down and to the right at his bent arm, where a small device is radiating as shown with several small lines. Above him the message from the device is shown in a frame, which is divided in two by a line. The top part has one line of text, with a x at the end for closing the message. And below in the second half are two lines of text. Cueball is speaking to someone off-panel, who replies from a starburst at the panel's edge.]