According to my friend Emily’s blog, my last blog post was two weeks ago. For that reason I feel I’m definitely due for another overdue blog post 
For starters. I’M TIRED OF BEING SICK!! Okay, that’s out of the way. I think I’m going on almost week two of the cold that won’t let go. It’s quite frustrating, especially now that it’s not bad enough to be couch-ridden and watch movies all day, but still bad enough that I worry about lip-drying effect of having to breathe through my nose all night. And the cough. It’s gone from slight, end-of-cold cough, to annoying tickle-in-the-back-of-your-thoat hacking, to productive, phlegm coughing to, finally, the dry tickle it is right now. Yay. Maybe I’ll blame it on the changing weather
So far I have nine of the twenty sets of vital signs I need for my EMT class. It’s curious how many people giggle when you tell them to look straight at you to check their pupils. Is there something I’m missing? And please, there is a difference between touching somebody for a medical purpose, i.e. breath sounds, skin temp, respirations, and just touching somebody. I would never dream of coming up to a random guy and putting my hands on his chest, wrist and forehead, but when taking vitals I don’t even think about it. But I notice, especially when guys are examining girls, they usually leave the listening for breath sounds at the front (chest) till last. Just do it. I’m not going to bite you. Oh well.
Blood pressure. I’m learning by trial and error that I can trust my gut when I think I’m hearing something. I was taking BP on someone and it was low, so low I was convinced I was wrong, but when I palpated the BP it came back exactly what I had heard. So, I think I’m better at this than I think I am. Although, I still need to do a bunch more before I feel comfortable.
This is an incorrect method as your thumb has its own pulse and you can hear that pulse through your stethoscope instead of the one your listening for...bad file picture.
Okay, this post is getting boring…Sorry. I was all excited to sit down and write something out, but now I can’t remember what I was so excited about?
The next post won’t be two weeks from now. I promise. Mostly because I know that in the next week things will be happening that are very exciting Stay tuned!
Random fact of the week: A BP cuff is also know as a sphygmomanometer. That’s right.
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