Arterial blood samples help health professionals determine how much oxygen is in the blood and whether blood pH is normal. ABGs are used to diagnose a number of illnesses, including heart, liver and kidney failure. So I walk into the patient's room just as the nurse is sitting down to the patient's bedside. She's got her gloves on and she's holding a syringe (3-4 inches?). Attached to the needle is a little vial used for collecting blood. She carefully felt the wrist for the patient's pulse and then slowly stuck the needle ALL THE WAY into his wrist. I think I must have cringed in disbelief, trying to imagine how much that must hurt! YOOOOOWWW!! Seeing no blood immediately enter the vial (which meant she hadn't found the artery) the nurse moves the needle around slowly in a semi-circular motion while at the same time pulling the needle in and out ever so slightly, looking for the artery. Suddenly, there's blood in the vial and within a couple seconds, it's full and she extracts the needle from the patient's wrist. The patient tolerated the procedure relatively well, I never even heard him make a peep. Maybe he fainted? I almost did! I hope I never have to get one of those done when I'm conscious!
12:37 call to Hamad General to pick up a patient!!! I think I mentioned that the CCU goes from being really really quiet to really really busy. With just over an hour left in my shift, I was already looking forward to, well, washing my face when I got home (my second favourite thing to do when I leave the hospital). Soumya walked up to me and asked me if I wanted to accompany one of the other nurses to Hamad to pick up a patient from the ER. I tried to maintain some sort of professionalism. OH BOY!! I thought, this is going to be exciting. Within seconds I was carrying a backpack full of emergency equipment (in case the patient should go into cardiac arrest en route) and following the nurse down to the ER where we picked up a doctor, went out the back door and jumped into an idling ambulance. The paramedics turned on the flashing lights for the 10-minute drive to the hospital (that was pretty exciting, I'm not going to lie). Sitting in the back, I hung on tightly to whatever sturdy object I could. We pulled up to Hamad and went directly to the ER, a small overly crowded room full of doctors and nurses. Sorry, I should clarify: this was the men's ER. I hear the women's ER is much nicer. Only a few patients were visible, including ours, a man who had recently arrived in Qatar from traveling abroad with chest pain and shortness of breath. After a brief exchange, the doctor said "let's go" and the paramedics transferred the man onto the stretcher and wheeled him back to the ambulance and we jumped in.
When we arrived back at the Heart Hospital, the man was immediately brought up to the cath lab, as it was suspected he was having a heart attack. Being Saturday, a cardiologist was paged to come in and perform an emergency angiogram to see if any of the man's arteries were blocked. Since this was an emergency, the catheter was inserted into the man's arm, instead of his leg. Within minutes, the radioactive dye was injected into his heart and his arteries appeared on a large screen before us.
I'll pause here to say that there is something really fascinating about watching this procedure unfold. I can see why people are drawn to the cath lab: every patient is different, every circumstance unique. Each time a patient arrives, it's a mystery that needs to be solved.
Besides having a massive heart, the patient's arteries were normal and doctors attributed his chest pain and shortness of breath to some other cause, possibly stress.
Here's a photo of our dinner at Villagio the other night.
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