thermometers suck...
Jan. 27th, 2004 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
karenorso i can't really use regular thermometers cuz of the barbell in my tongue. it doesn't lie flat, i guess, so the heat pocket under my tongue isn't maintained. i even have a digital tongue thermometer and it doesn't work. i should just take out the barbell, right? nah. i don't do that. i've done it...maybe twice since i had it repierced (well actually just reopened, but we won't go into details) a little over two years ago. And once when i was taking it out to clean, cuz i thought there was something wrong, my friend called and kept me on the phone for a while and when i tried to put the thing back in, it was already really difficult to get it back in.
Anyway, so barring the use of an oral thermometer, the next logical conclusion is that a digital ear thermometer would be better. after all, it's what they use in the hospital, right, so ears must be good conveyors of body temp. i have no pesky piercings INSIDE my ears, so that shouldn't be a problem. I have this Braun one that is really simple. put it in the ear, press a buttton and voila, temperature. thing is, the reading seems to be quite inaccurate. for instance, if you pull the ear up (like tug on it gently from the top), which i believe the directions say to do, the reading is different than if you don't. the reading is different in both ears. its different in the same ear if you do it twice in ten seconds. and i mean a range of at least a whole number. i mean, it can give you a rough estimate, i guess. cuz like sunday, when it was giving me pretty consistantly in the high 102's i did a control test on my parents and they were both within .5 of normal.
now i feel mostly fine and its giving me between 100.8 and 99.3. the retarded oral thermometer won't even go up to normal, it stays in the 97 range. so do i have a fever or not? who can say? certainly not me. i still feel a little warm...i dunno.
yes, i did just write a whole decently lengthed post about bad thermometers.
Anyway, so barring the use of an oral thermometer, the next logical conclusion is that a digital ear thermometer would be better. after all, it's what they use in the hospital, right, so ears must be good conveyors of body temp. i have no pesky piercings INSIDE my ears, so that shouldn't be a problem. I have this Braun one that is really simple. put it in the ear, press a buttton and voila, temperature. thing is, the reading seems to be quite inaccurate. for instance, if you pull the ear up (like tug on it gently from the top), which i believe the directions say to do, the reading is different than if you don't. the reading is different in both ears. its different in the same ear if you do it twice in ten seconds. and i mean a range of at least a whole number. i mean, it can give you a rough estimate, i guess. cuz like sunday, when it was giving me pretty consistantly in the high 102's i did a control test on my parents and they were both within .5 of normal.
now i feel mostly fine and its giving me between 100.8 and 99.3. the retarded oral thermometer won't even go up to normal, it stays in the 97 range. so do i have a fever or not? who can say? certainly not me. i still feel a little warm...i dunno.
yes, i did just write a whole decently lengthed post about bad thermometers.
