EKG’s Can Be Scary
Linda Meckler
When you are a patient in the hospital and all you have to do is watch the monitors you are connected too beeping and making squiggling mechanisms all over the place what are you to think?
Well it must be very scary; especially, since most people don’t have any idea what all the squiggly lines and beeps mean. Plus there are numbers all over the place.
Stop:
This does not have to be scary. All you have to do is understand some simple things to recognize what you are seeing.
When you are hooked up to some sort of beeping machine In the Emergency Room, your hospital room, or even in your own home ask some questions.
What is that machine?
What does it do?
What should I watch for?
What should I expect from this machine?
An EKG monitor will show you the pattern in how your heart is beating. For instance; if you are watching the screen make all these different designs and they are all pretty much the same patterns you are okay.
If you move your arm or body you will see it go berserk and all the lines will be fighting each other or so it seems. This is because you’re moving.
If you stay perfectly still the EKG will reset itself and start its own slow pattern again. What you need to watch out for when you are perfectly still is when the pattern you are watching or being hypnotized by starts moving differently. If in the hospital your EKG monitor will be hooked up to the nurse’s station and will be monitored. So you will be okay.
If you are all alone and watching the strange dance and it starts changing drastically you are probably hooked into some kind of relay system. Don’t Freak.
Also on the EKG monitor is numbers which give your blood pressure and heart rate. I think the more information you have the better off you are.
When you are in the hospital and family and friends visit their eyes will go automatically to the EKG monitor because it is a moving thing and beeping and making noise.
If you explain what it is to your guests they will be less stressed as well as you will be when you watch their eye balls bounce along with the EKG hieroglyphic’s bouncing across the screen.
Children especially can get very scared when they see this kind of equipment in a hospital room or where ever.
A little bit of knowledge can go a long way.
I’ve always felt this way. When I visited my mother in the hospital and she was hooked up to a EKG machine I watched it constantly. Little did my mother or nurses know that I knew how to read the monitor. When one day while visiting, my mother’s rhythm changed drastically and I ran for the nurse. She said don’t worry we’re monitoring her on our screen. But I said, “has this happened before?”
She said, “Yes. I didn’t know you knew how to read the monitor or I would have told you.”
Copyright 2013 Linda Meckler
