I hope I pass

i hope I pass the ACLS test this week!  I am sure it will be knowledge and memory served well where I work!

To be or not to be…..

Todays scene: 48 patients, 8 RNs, 2 PCT, and 2 Resource persons.

Does anyone out there is the nursing world think this is kosher? I just want to know because I am new and may be just in a state of perpetual panic.

That is the question.

Takotsubo syndrome.

I am convinced that there is more to a heart than pumping action, oxygenation and so on. There is such a thing a broken heart thats demise was other than biological predispositions or life style etc…There really is a broken heart syndrome, though it may be rare. Here is a read at EchoDoc.

Of course it is a rarity, but I will not dismiss it. After all  many have felt the pangs of heart ache, with or without reason, or angst–The crushing chest pain of anxiety that spans the width of the chest.

Or how does anger harden the arteries?

Who hardens their heart?

I will miss…

I will miss Graham. What a great pleasure to read the writings found at that blog! I will certainly feel a piece of my daily read missing as if there were no more Sunday New York Times to read, or no Monday or Thursday NY Times crosswords (you know they are easier). That to me is how much I will miss those student writings!

Dear Graham!  Xela, Guatemala will hopefully be kind to you and prove to be a great learning experience. I am waiting for what is next from you.

Jane

The Big Brain in my Chest

During my studies starting probably with oxygenation…I thought of the heart as a pump!

The years went by and I started working

caring for patients being monitored via telemetry as my first job, (and only so far).

I thought it was neat that these little packs attached to electrodes placed on the chest could map the electrical activity in there.

It is more than that. It is the whole system, the chemicals, the transmitters, the electricity, the pipes.

It is the questions, the feeling, the brain in my chest.

The flushing and racing, and beating and stopping or slowing or pausing.

The dizziness or fainting or pain, fright, or trauma. The sweat, lighthead, or nausea, or tingly feeling, of vagal reaction.

So how does it work again? and again I go around the same things with the answers and the unanswered.

The tears and the feelings of that big squeezy thing in the chest that dictates so much,

of what you do.

who you are.

how you live.

and die.

There is some big muscle thing in there

I can feel it. We all feel it.

And when I can not sleep and my eyes are closed,

I can lay there and see in my brain

My heart

and I see feel and know

What it is doing.

It is beating hard.