TMI - Too Much Information

A User's Guide

To all the apps that are supposed to make my life easier, that are meant to prevent my inevitable death, and to those health wallets that organize it all into one convenient spot, I hope you take it in the spirit it’s meant when I say, screw you.

That’s right. You don’t have to remind me I’ve been sitting for a half hour, or it’s time to go shopping, or do some breathing, or hack at the todo list that has been dinging the same reminder for two years.

Thank you for emphasizing my three moment attention span. Enough already! I can get through my day without knowing that there’s a severe thunderstorm watch 272 miles away. And my inability to open my eyes gives me the pollen count just fine.

The husband enjoys having the latest tech to come on the market.  He doesn’t like to use these things, but he’s very interested to see how they work. On me. Doesn’t he understand that even grateful guinea pigs like myself fall victim to the very anxiety that the breathing app is trying to defeat? After these 10 second ads of course.

The tyranny on the phone has only been matched by the one that’s migrated to my wrist. Full of monitoring, maximizing, and monetizing apps, it only works on amplifying my own, natural dis-ease. 

I was vaguely aware that while my blood pressure tends high, my heart rate is low. Every doctor I’ve gone to has asked if I was an athlete. No, unless walking the same flight of stairs 7 times a day to the refrigerator and back, counts.

Quickly, I was overwhelmed by the numbers. The watch is heavy. Not attractive. He bought me a cute band and told me to keep going. I was suspicious that he was so persistent. 

“I’ll give it to one of the kids,” I offered.

“It can track your steps,” he tried. “And your heart rate.”

“That’s bullshit,” I told him. “I’ll know when my heart stops.”

It was difficult to resist a GPS aided pedometer, though. He’s not the only one that likes a new toy.

“Did you sign some contract? Am I dying?” I asked.

Did I need to find out that I have a naturally low resting heart rate? No, but information is neutral—one more lie I used to believe. 

“It can help you find your phone,” he admitted finally and I understood what it was all about. I agreed to the fruit named time piece because it saved us all from the trauma of looking for my phone. 

Not that we don’t miss the charm in screaming, “Where is that damned thing? Anyone see it? Honey, where’d you put my phone?” After all, one of the more consistent memories of my childhood is my mother looking for her cigarettes and keys in much the same way. A small one of life’s doom cycles broken literally on my watch.

It was growing on me. I adored that I could make sure my children weren’t bleeding somewhere without digging into the scary inner reaches of my purse. I could set a timer and answer texts without knowing where the phone was, once it got used to my accent, anyway. Apparently, Brooklyn over a frying pan isn’t easily recognizable, though it’s gotten better. Or I have.

I appreciate its collection of exercise and movement with its closing rings and graphic depictions of how I am getting stronger, everyday. After all, if you go hiking in the woods and there are no apps to record it, did it ever really happen at all?

And more often than I feel comfortable, I hear a disembodied voice say, “Sorry, I can’t help with that.” Sometimes, it even belongs to the watch.

When I went to my physical, she’d asked about my heart rate.

“Some people are naturally low,” she said. I chose to ignore the dubious look I imagined on her face, desperate to leave my heart free of one more imagined sickness.

It was all well and good until I started talking to my octogenarian uncle. He was tracking his sleep, he said. The watch calculated his hours of REM versus core. It quantified how long he was restless and what his blood oxygen level was during the night. I mean, there were even more graphs involved! It was like a full sleep panel study on his wrist and in an app. I was intrigued.

Was I was a walking zombie or an uber sleeper? How much of my slumber was restless and not quality at all. How could I improve my sleep duration score?

Stop. I hear your groans now. It was like staking out the scene of the accident before any cars get on the road and then lying down on the median.

It began its warnings quickly. “Your heart rate has fallen dangerously below—”

When I told medical professionals who love me, they said I should check it out. Maybe it’s an irregular rhythm, maybe since my heart rate is naturally low, blah blah. The watch was not happy with me.

Don’t go nuts, my friend said. Check it out. Maybe it’s sleep apnea, maybe something else. I looked at the graph again knowing my anxiety sees its meat and goes in for the kill.

My GP and and my friend asked if I feel palpitations.

I stopped myself from screaming, I’m not sure anymore. What does the watch say? 

I hurl myself out of some seriously core sleep to wonder if I’m still alive. The watch says so. It only indicated dips to dangerous levels for a few minutes at a time, right before I wake up in the morning. 

I think of meditating, my one fail safe in an anxiety storm. I close my eyes. Can I breathe my way into heart failure? I gave up sleeping that night.

It was time to consult professionals. Out here specialty appointments are hard to come by. Apparently I can’t get a sleep study for five months unless I go to a big city. Don’t they know I will. I won’t sleep until then?

My friend, an ever practical, loving luddite and cardiac care nurse, set me straight as I spiraled.

“It’s too much fucking information. They have no idea what your heart does unless you’re in the hospital for heart failure. All these people with all their data. It’s bullshit.”

I’m still checking it out as she also advised me to, but once I get the all clear, I think I’ll put it in its charger while I’m sleeping—restlessly or restfully doesn’t matter. Much like my young women friends I’ve advised to stop tracking their cycles in this horrifying Handmaid’s Tale reality, there are some things that don’t need to be quantified. TMI is a peril of modern life, a Meta amplified, Apple codified, Google aggregating, ChatGPT running world, I’m just trying to figure out the best way to muddle through.

Hold on. There must be an app for that.