Heart Condition Part XX
7/16/12
After a few minutes of chatting with the aides about how I was feeling, I looked around and wondered why the girls had not been in here yet. Mom said she would go get them since they were down in the waiting room. Neither of the little girls knew why I was in the hospital and if they did know what was happening they probably had no understanding its implications, all they knew was that daddy was in the hospital and that he was doing ok. They entered the room and immediately began telling me about their day at Marla’s. They said that they had so much fun playing with their friends. I then asked them if they had learned anything in school in which I received a quick “yes” and then they continued with their playing activity information. It was great to lay my eyes on them and to hear their voices. Even though it had only been a few hours, their voices lifted my spirits as they did each day.
One of the aides came in the room to see if I had finished my dinner, which was still covered because I had not had the opportunity to eat it yet. She quickly left after finding out the situation and I continued the conversation with the little girls. Bonnie said that she was going to go and get Tatem and bring her up here and that she would be right back. Mom and dad said that they would take the girls to get something to eat and then would coordinate things with Bonnie when they finished. Bonnie looked at me and asked how I was feeling to which I responded that I was ok except for this single point located on my shoulder which was still there and letting me know about it.
It took a few more minutes for everyone to exit the room and then I could hear the nurses all listening to Rachel and Rebekkah’s stories as their voices faded down the halls. The girls would talk to anyone and never met a stranger, which was a trait that I had when I was a little boy, either that or I always had something to say about things. I pulled the bedside table over close to me and then took off the lid to my dinner plate. It was typical hospital food for an inpatient which contained nothing with fat and not much seasoning on the meat. As I began to eat I wondered what kind of diet changes I would have to make in order to keep my blood pressure intact. I also began to wonder if there would ever be a time that I would be able to get off of the blood pressure medication which I knew I would begin starting here pretty quick.
Dinner was nothing to get excited about but it was food and since I was hungry it tasted mighty fine. I usually do not complain about food since all of us need it to function properly plus my parents always told me to be happy with what you receive to eat for some day you might not have any. They did not tell me this to force me to eat but to understand that there are many people in the world that go to bed hungry and how blessed our family was to have an adequate food supply. One of the aides came into my room with all of the vital sign equipment, right on schedule I might add. She asked if I was done with the dinner tray and I said “yes”. She parked her blood pressure pole and then approached the bedside table. She took the entire tray and began to leave the room. I scooted the table away from my bed and put it next to my bed where I could reach the water if I needed a drink.
The aide shortly returned to the room and was followed by the evening supervisor which had a pill in a cup in her hand. She approached my bed and stuck out her hand that contained the pill. I looked in the cup and then said no thanks but that I appreciated the offer, everyone laughed. A sarcastic “ok, fine” came out of my mouth and then I took the pill out of the cup and put it in my mouth, took a drink of water and swallowed it. After I had swallowed the pill I then asked what I just took and she said it was a blood pressure pill. Just then I heard the ripping of the blood pressure cuff Velcro and I asked if we could wait for a while so that the medication would have time to kick in, a polite “no” followed so I then raised my left arm for the ceremonial wrapping. She placed the cuff on my arm and then I lowered it back to the bed, a few seconds later I heard that famous sound the instrument makes when it begins to press around my arm and at the same time I felt the cuff squeeze tight on my arm.
I have had my blood pressure taken enough times over the years to know that if the cuff continues its squeezing for a long time that means that it is having a difficult time finding the initial pulse of the artery, which means that the pressure is high. This was the case with me since the cuff had to continue its climb twice before it was tight enough to initialize my pressure status. As the nurse and aide stood close to monitor the results, I looked at the nurse and said sarcastically something along the lines of I told you we should have waited for the meds to kick in. The cuff continued its release and it seemed like it took forever before it finally released which it was only doing its job since my pressure was so high. The squeezing on my left arm made the pain in my shoulder increase in its magnitude but it was still tolerable just annoying.
Of course my blood pressure was still sky high and considered to be at a dangerous level, so I got to inherit the blood pressure cuff monitoring system on a permanent basis. In other words, I had to wear that thing on my arm and was not allowed to take it off. Since they had given me blood pressure medicine the nurse set the measuring increments for every twenty minutes. So even though they had just checked my pressure it took an initial reading and set itself for twenty minutes. The initial reading had not varied much from the previous reading which I did not think that it would. The pain in my shoulder continued and was hurting more since I had my pressure checked two times in the last five minutes, which I was beginning to finalize that the pain had something to do with my blood pressure.
The blood pressure readings were a royal inconvenience to me but what I was struggling with the most was the nasal cannula that was jammed up into my nose supplying me with oxygen. My oxygen saturation which was the overall amount of oxygen my lungs were producing to my limbs was well within the normal levels and not dropping at all. This meant that my lung capacity was functioning normally which also meant that my heart was providing enough blood flow to my lungs to complete its task. What I did not know is that my overall output was being stressed tremendously due to my problem which had not presented itself as of yet. The cannula itself, if you do not know, has two prongs which stick up one in each nostril and streams air into your nose which then travels to your lungs as an aid for the production of proper lung function. Anyway, the cannula was being a pain to me and was getting more uncomfortable as the minutes passed and since my oxygen levels had not been affected, I promptly took out the cannula when the nurses were not present in the room.
Bonnie and Tatem arrived back in the room shortly after the first few blood pressure checks had been recorded. It was approaching 7 pm and the evening was settling in as another normally busy evening on the nursing floor. I could hear the almost continual call lights beginning to sound which I knew everyone would eventually be scurrying around trying to keep everyone happy. I knew this because when I would have to draw patients on the floor I would hear at least two call lights go off before I completed my task. This was when I knew that the nursing staff on the evening shift earned their money, and they deserved a lot more if the truth be told.
Bonnie was asking me about how I was feeling and I was explaining things to her and Tatem. Tatem was old enough to understand the seriousness of the situation and had a deep concerned look on her face. I tried my best to reassure her that all would be ok, she said she was ok but a dad knows his daughter, especially when times of trouble or concern. She knew that something was not right because of the way my physical condition looked, I had not realized it but my complexion had turned a little bit more gray / green in color which was an obvious sign that something was not right and even though I was actually feeling ok no one would believe me. So, I had to continue telling people things that they did not believe.
Bonnie and Tatem stayed for about thirty minutes which was a great amount of time since I was due to have another EKG soon. In fact, as the Cardiopulmonary tech came into the room Bonnie decided to call it a night and return to the house which was fine since Bonnie had to pick up the girls from my parent’s house. As the tech began to attach me to the EKG machine Bonnie said goodbye and gave me a kiss. She also told me not to give the nurses any problems, to listen and obey them and for me to remember that they were in charge not me. I looked at her in shock as the cardiopulmonary tech began to laugh. I told her that I was mortified with that statement which everyone in the room ignored. I was told to lie back on the bed and lay still and quiet while the instrument recorded the electrical activity of my heart. It did not take too long for this reading to print out and a quick overlook said basically nothing unusual going on with my heart.
This puzzled me as the blood pressure cuff began to squeeze my arm once again. The cardiopulmonary tech asked me if I should be wearing my oxygen and I answered her yes and that I would put it back on as soon as she was done. It had been approximately seven hours since my onset of pain and there were no abnormal EKG findings at all. I know that the cardiopulmonary tech would not go into any details but she showed me the printout which had probable pattern displays on it which said nothing abnormal. I held the printout in my right hand since the blood pressure cuff was in the process of squeezing my left arm off. The only thing that the EKG shoed was that my heart rate was fast, which I knew that since I could feel each heartbeat as the blood flowed through the cuff on my arm. To me it was looking like I had blood pressure problems and I might get out of having anything else done except inheriting a pill or two.
The cardiopulmonary tech and I talked for a few minutes and she gave me instructions to behave myself as she was leaving the room. I had a few minutes alone to stop and think about some things. So I looked at the last reading of my blood pressure and realized that it was down slightly. I then turned my attention to the pain in my shoulder and after a few minutes I realized that even though the pain was still there it felt like it had eased up a bit. The pressure was still there and in the same spot but it was somehow lighter and the “finger” pushing on my shoulder had relaxed.
Even though my process had started the results of my negligence had not appeared as of yet. We as humans like to play around as much as we can by ignoring the things that are important for our well-being. God tries His best to allow us to understand what is going on both in our physical lives and in our spiritual lives. His process of getting our attention is at first subtle and then He has to work His way up to “knocking us about the head”. When we look back at this Godly process and the physical ones as well, we see how blindly we were to all of the warning signs. God does not like for us to get to the point where He has to use drastic measures on us so that we figure things out.
However, we have a tendency of forcing Him to act in this manner and then complain about it when His methods choose to appear. There is no one else to blame but ourselves and it is useless to fight against His methods or to argue about them because in both cases His methods will not go away but only dig deeper into our world in order to make us restore our beliefs in Him once again. Humans have been doing things by themselves for as long as time has had record, but it is not until we return to God that we realize our true purpose in life and the truth about how we are supposed to live.
DLB
No comments:
Post a Comment