Wut up world?!
I hope all is good with ya’ll. It has been a crazy week and a great number of thangs have happened since the last post. This week I want to explain something that most people know about but it is rarely explained in a way that makes sense, and that is blood pressure. In my last post I broke down a little bit about the heart’s electrical conduction, which plays a role in what I am going to let ya’ll know about now. So here goes and I hope this makes a little more sense when we are done here yo!
Blood Pressure 120/80 (ideal blood pressure for average person)
Systolic (Sis-tall-ik) Pressure – The top number in the fraction here ya’ll (120). The top number in the fraction here means the amount of pressure your heart is putting out when its pumpin. As I explained in my last post about the “Ventricles” being in the bottom part of the heart where all the real muscle is at! The right ventricle pumps blood into yo lungs so the blood can pick up some oxygen (O2), and drop off some carbon dioxide (CO2) that you breathe out. The left ventricle pumps the blood that picked up the oxygen (O2) in the lungs and delivers it to the rest of the body to supply yo cells with that oxygen (O2) and pick up the carbon dioxide (CO2) they make. So, when your heart gives a good squeeze and pumps that blood out of your left ventricle, that is called your systolic pressure.
Diastolic (Die-as-tall-ik) Pressure – The bottom number in the fraction ya’ll (80). The bottom number means the amount of blood pressure in your body when your heart is relaxed. Since your heart is constantly beating, the only time yo heart gets the oxygen it needs to keep going is when the heart is relaxed in between each squeeze, or beat. So, during that time in between each beat when yo heart is relaxed it is known as diastolic pressure.
Asystole (A-sis-toll-eee) – Okay, so in medical language when you see a word that starts with an “A”, it usually means the word it is in front of is lacking something (example: apnea {without air}). Ya’ll can probably guess then that “a-systole” means without pressure. This is the medical term that is used when the heart stops beating and the person is no longer with us. Like I was telling ya’ll about the heart’s electrical system, take a look at the picture above; the squiggly lines represent when the electricity in your heart when it is beating and the flat line means “gone on to a better place”.
Now that ya know a lil bit of the lingo here is the story! I was talkin with my boss at the “care station” about what was going on during the night with the people I was taking care of. As we were talking we were also walking out towards the monitors that tells us what our patient’s hearts are doing at all times. Sooo, during our conversation the monitor alerted us that someone had gone into asystole. Now since I have been a nurse I have never had someone’s heart stop beating during my shift, so needless to say ya boy was scared and nervous! My first reaction was to run into the room and check on the person. Sho nuff when I came into the room things were not looking good. I checked the persons pulse and nothing was there, so pushed the person over onto their back and began to perform CPR. The efforts to save this person went on for what seemed like hours. Unfortunately, even after some amazing efforts I must say, we were unable save this person. This is the hardest part about my job! I became a nurse to help people and I was unable to help this person. After a little bit of grieving I came to the conclusion that it was just how it was supposed to happen. No matter how much we tried this person was not going to live. AWW MANNNN!!!
Lesson of the week: Try my best even though I have no idea what the outcome may be! That way I can always look back and say, “I gave it my best”, and have no regrets no matter what the outcome may be!
Peace and Love,
MaddHadda aka The Hood Nurse!