In celebration of “WEAR RED DAY” to promote awareness for heart disease, I’ve decided to give you a gift. I’m going to educate you on heart attacks with my personal humored touch. For three years when I wasn’t running or juggling kids, I morphed into an Emergency Room Nurse. I saw my fair share of patients that presented for chest pain and thought I’d shed a little light on the subject.
Myocardial Infarction (a.k.a.: “HEART ATTACK”, “THE BIG ONE” or “A GRABBER”)
Try it out in a sentence… “I think I’m having a grabber!” (as you clutch the left side of your chest where your heart is located). Signs and symptoms of a heart attack range from uncomfortable chest pressure/pain/squeezing which is code for “I feel like I have cement in my chest” or “I feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest” or “I feel like there is a vice squeezing my chest.” Pain that spreads to the shoulder, neck, one or both arms, back, jaw…..okay okay….anything above the belly button basically. One might be short of breath, feel dizzy, start sweating buckets, and possibly start chucking up anything in their stomach...or at least they might feel like they want to. This is when a person needs to pay attention-and get in to the ER fast.
Emergency Room Visit (a.k.a.: “A fun filled trip to the hospital complete with ripping, sticking, poking, prodding”)
At the hospital I work at, when someone presents with a chief complaint of chest pain, they are speedily wheeled back to the treatment room before they can utter a grunt. Then the fun begins! Typically this is a scary process for someone. And why not? They are tied to very nearly every machine we have in the place starting with oxygen tubing being shoved into their nose (a heart attack is lack of oxygen to the heart muscle-we put this on a patient to get extra oxygen to the heart to stop the dying of the heart muscle). Add a blood pressure cuff, a pulse oximeter, and some sticky patches to monitor the heart rhythm and we are good to go.
Well not so fast. We also take a picture of the patient’s heart rhythm. Sticky pads are placed all over the chest for this procedure which takes all of 3 seconds to record. Then the nurse gets to lovingly rip the pads off the patient’s body-similar to a wax removal treatment. Fun stuff. We start an IV just in case we need to suddenly give any medicine to help the heart. Four yummy orange flavored baby aspirin are given to the patient to eat and then lab gets to come down and, as gentle as can be, remove several tubes of blood from the patient’s arm. One of the lab tests we do is called a troponin level. Troponin is released from the heart when it is damaged…this aids in the confirmation of a myocardial infarction (heart attack).
You’ve won a night’s stay in the beautiful department of ICU…try one of our comfy beds….
With a diagnosis of “Myocardial Infarction (MI)” or “Chest Pain rule out MI” you win yourself a night at the Holiday Inn Express Hospital (most cities and towns have one of these types of Holiday Inns) and can look forward to fine dining and a culture enriched atmosphere of nursing and medicine for your pleasure. Some of you may be thinking to yourself… “Hmmm…trying to tough out a heart attack at home seems pretty reasonable compared to what I’d be in for at the ER.” No…no, no, no. I tell you this because it is important to me and to your heart that you understand the seriousness of the situation and factors that contribute to myocardial infarctions….LIKE HEART DISEASE.
Heart disease is the leading killer for both women and men in the US. What can you do to prevent this? LOTS!: Exercising regularly, maintaining a healthy weight, eating healthy (lay off the big macs!!!), QUIT SMOKING, and manage your stress!!! Understand and be able to recognize the warning signs of a heart attack…and call 911 immediately. Don’t wait 2 hours for it to go away-like Mayo Clinic researchers have found patients still doing.
Check out http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/ for more information about your heart and how to keep it healthy and get more miles out of it. And you women out there I love? You need to watch a very moving video called The Heart Truth at http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/educational/hearttruth/video/tht-video.htm.
Tomorrow you will see me wearing red. I will be wearing it in honor of your heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment