When I was a little girl, I practically lived in the hospital and my friends are usually a bunch of adults who called themselves cardiologist. I had chronic bronchitis as well as a loose valve in my left ventricle, and I had to be closely monitored all the time, especially when I contract a fever for the fear of infection in both my lungs and my heart.
It wasn’t exactly fun to practically grow up in the hospital. They pricked me with needles for blood samples and IV Drip more than they would feed me, and I watched Vital Signs monitors more than I watched the idiot box when I was a little girl.
Do you know what Vital sign monitor is? Well, it’s a machine that functions to measure and display heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure on a computer screen. Heart rate, breathing rate and blood pressure are all vital signs in a living human body. If these vital signs become abnormal, an alarm usually sounds. One of the most famous and well know vital signs monitor is Welch allyn vital sign monitor.
These machines are also used during those conscious sedation procedures… just to make sure that nothing goes wrong with the patient. I’ve always hated these machine. It makes me thinks of death. You know… when someone die or goes into a state of comatose, these vital signs machines are the first in line to alarm the medical officers in charge that you’re dead or if there’s something wrong with you because it’ll go ‘BEEP’ very loudly.
When I was forced to overnight in the hospital for monitoring, I always get terrified… terrified of the beeping sounds that will out from those machines, that is. I’ve heard it pretty often in the ward that houses cancer patients. The beeping sound is really traumatizing. Well, at least to me it is, because it tells me that someone that I might know is gone, and I’ll never see them again.
Anyway, it is a good thing that I was a sickly child and faced near death experience more than anyone else. It made me appreciate life more, and it also helps me understand a lot of illness and be more emphatic towards patients and their families.
Cleffairy: If someone tells me if they’re sick and was thrown into the operation room, I can tell if they’re telling the truth or fibbing by just listening to their description about the procedures that has been performed on them. So… if you happen to be my friend or my student, don’t dream of bluffing me if you’re not sick, because I will know if you lie!