As someone who’s never identified as a gamer, it amuses me how much adult life can feel like I’m playing one of those ’90s RPGs, except instead of guiding Ness through collecting whatever it was that Ness collected to save his 2D universe from the bad aliens, I’m running around collecting bits of paper to make progress in a 1D bank account.

Working in Antarctica requires some amount of testing of participants, to minimise chances of things going wrong on The Ice. Exactly what tests are required varies depending on the situation, this time I need to do a sort of medium-level battery - I will only be deployed for a couple months in summer and am not old enough to require some tests, but my role involves “deep field” work which requires others.

Not too long after accepting my offer of employment, AntNZ sent me a form and a checklist to be completed by my dentist, GP, and self; then returned to AntNZ for final approval. Overall it’s a pretty straightforward process, but as seems to be the pattern with this particular GP (I’ve been meaning to change for years) it became much more complicated than necessary.

The dental part was dead easy - luckily I’d just been in for a routine checkup a couple weeks prior and everything was fine on that front! The dentist wanted one additional X-Ray to what that had on file, so an appointment was made, and on the day it took all of 20 minutes between arrival and departure with a letter in both hard copy and digital forms.

Several current vaccinations are required, and unfortunately my vaccination history in NZ isn’t complete so I needed most of them to be administered. Instead of one round of vaccinations as might be expected, I wound up with 3 (not counting an additional COVID-19 booster I opted for later on). The first covered the obvious flu vaccination, then the second took care of some that were missed the first time, then a third due to a decision informed by blood test results. So, maybe not an optimal process, but most of the steps at least made a bit of sense.

There should’ve been one simple visit to a blood testing lab, but after a quick-and-easy sign in, the phlebotomist couldn’t figure out why there were 3 referrals in the system, for different sets of tests with overlap between them. A more senior person was called in to have a look, they both left and returned with a third. Thankfully I only had to provide enough blood for the unique tests in the union of the three sets! On my second visit (because it turned out that a required test had been omitted) I had to explain why there was a stale referral in the system that we should now ignore (I’m not sure if it it was a fourth referral that was added later by the GP, or one of the first three that somehow hadn’t been cleared out by the lab). This felt a bit less sensible than the vaccinations.

An “exercise ECG” was required (due to the deep field aspect of the role), which turned out to be mostly fun and interesting, except the voicemail about it from the GP told me to go to a radiology lab. At Pacific Radiology, both the receptionist and myself spent a few minutes in a state of mild confusion (the receptionist more than me, as she hadn’t witnessed this pattern) until it became clear that the referral had been to Southern Heart! At the exercise ECG appointment a few days later, it was interesting to compare the results from their proper 12-lead ECG, with a late model Garmin smart watch that I’ve been trying out. I knew watches are inherently limited in their ability to measure circulatory stuff, but at least with this particular watch on my wrist, the watch’s heart data is nearly useless. With what I’d think are nearly ideal conditions for the watch - hands still on the treadmill handle, skin not too sweaty - readings varied within about 30% of reality! Since then, I’ve picked up a chest strap which is much better suited to my purposes (mainly towards a climbing project - more on that later).

After the blood tests results were sent to the GP’s office, it was time for an examination. At this point, my expectations were at a low, and the performance was mostly in line with them, but there was a bit of a bright spot! Presumably, the climbing kick that I’ve been on the last few months (and all this running around) has helped me earn an “excellent” mark for physique :).