Mice and BPs

This morning I got up at the 5:30 (nobody should have to get up that early on a Saturday morning!) to be at the American Heart Walk by 7:30 where I volunteered to take blood pressures. I was about 15 minutes early so I decided to relax in my car since it was a bit nippy with a bit of a breeze blowing. I don't recall what I was thinking about at the time, but out of the corner of my eye I saw this brown leaf rustling in the breeze where the windshield goes under the hood. I know the leaves have showed signs of starting to turn, but I thought it a bit strange to have a brown one. As I took a closer look, it took on the formation of a MOUSE's head. Now anybody who knows my past history very well knows I have a thing about those nasty little creatures! My immediate instincts were to draw my knees up to my chest for fear the little monster would find some way to get from under the hood to the inside of my car and run up my leg. I nervously watched my floorboard for a few minutes then decided the nippy air was a better option.

It was an interesting experience today. I was actually working in the stroke screening booth which I didn't know until I got there. All I knew was that I was asked to take blood pressures. Another nursing student from Chattanooga State and I were taking the BPs while two other people would then take the results and do more of a health history and discuss risks with them. I always dread the getting up early thing, but I do enjoy the bit of socializing such events bring.

I met an interesting lady who was from Pennsylvania. It always amuses me that people from PA know instantly that I'm a Mennonite when people from Chattanooga eventually gather up the courage to ask me what I am all about. It turns out that her daughter was the organizer of the heart walk which is what brought her there.

I found my first irregular heart beat today. I was listening to this lady's heart beat when I was taking her pressure and it would just suddenly skip a beat or so. It rather startled me. So I got one of the people in charge to come over, and sure enough, I was right. The other nursing student who volunteered came over to me and asked me to take the blood pressure of a man she had just taken several times. She was quite alarmed because it was 170/88. This was definitely cause for alarm. So I pumped up my cuff, and sure enough, I got about 168/88. So I got one of the nurses to come take it. She also got a high reading and the poor man was quite scared by this time. She reassured him that it wasn't necessarily anything to get really alarmed about. He just needed to make sure he keeps checking it every week to establish if it was an unusual incident or if there was a problem. So that was my excitement for the day. Who would ever have thought that irregular heartbeats and high blood pressures would be exciting???