Cardiac Rehab Workout - who needs to exercise after this?

Last Wednesday I got the pleasure of spending time with one of the cardiac rehab nurses, who not only taught me about the diversity in this particular field, but also let me participate with the patients at their weekly workout at the hospital gym.

Cardiac rehabilitaion is offered to a specifc group that involves, people who have cardiac history. This includes MI's, heart failure, post angioplasty, post CABG, post TAVI, post ICD and stable angina, I know there're lot of fancy abbreviations, but if I were to spell 'em out for you, you wouldn't learn anything and besides, google exists for this very purpose!
There are workouts four times a week, split into two categories. There's exercise with moderate intensity twice a week, this is for the "better" patients, they might be slightly younger that you'd expect for people with cardiac history - these are more or so fit enough to endure one hour of moderate intensity exercise. Then there's the low intensity exercise group, which is also twice a week, and the average age in this group would be around 75-80. This was on of the groups that I got the pleasure of participating in.

So I show up for my appointment with the nurse, dressed in scrubs, because I simply couldn't be bothered with putting on actual and comfortable workout clothes. The room is near the physio department, and it's basically one big gym room with everything apart from a treadmill. There are only two ladies in this class, the rest are male. Each of them get a belt that monitors and records their heart rates, and they get their BP's done prior to the exercises. They all have a target heart rate, that they should try to aim for, while they exercise. 
They have a card attached to their clothes that tells them which exercises, they are to do and in what order to do them in. The music is put on and the whistle goes of - now you have two minutes to do whatever is written on your card, then the whistle will sound and then you move on to the next exercise for two minutes, and so forth. I also got a card of my own, my card was identic to one of the other participants, who was this 80 year old gentleman, with whom I bonded with instantly. We would actually compete against each other or so he would say, especially when we did the walking exercise. He'd also refuse to start the exercises until he'd heard the whistle, to preserve his strenght he said, but we both knew better.
So there I was, doing cardiac rehab workout and actually having so much fun, being the semi-old age of 22, I actually broke out a sweat, this was obviously because I was chatting with my old chap and not because I'm slightly out of shape! ;)

-xoxo-

ECG's are my life.

So I'm halfway through my internship on CCU, in three weeks I will have to depart with Cardiology, which has grown on me even more.
I've already seen so many procedures, I've worked in recovery and I've spend time with the cardiac triage nurse. So I'll definitely be able to take a whole lot with me from this amazing experience, which it truely has been on CCU.

My mentor is only a few years older than me, and we're getting along just fine. Apart from the double-team care that we provide, we also find the time to gush and lush over a certain actor from a TV show that we're both obsessed with. However, it's not just fun and giggles all the time, she also finds the time to grill me on ECG's (that's what you get for mouthing off that you already know how to read 'em bloody things!) and teach me different arrhythmias, such as The Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome - you have to look this one up, despite this condition being very serious if it presents itself, it is one heck of a cool syndrome.
I'm so going to be a brain trust on ECG's.

I have yet to follow other specialist nurses, but I still have time for that and more importantly my mentor makes me take the time in order to see as much as possible.
I hope that the following three weeks will be equally as amazing and eduactional as the prior weeks have been. I'm sure I will be grilled more intensively and I look forward to that, especially if one of the subjects is previously mentioned actor and his fab abs.

-xoxo-

First week after the swap - cliff notes version.

So I've done my first week at the medical ward...I usually make the three dots for dramatic effect and trust me, they're very much needed in this particular post. I was supposed to stay at a medical ward that primarily dealt with cardiac patients, however, my second day in - I was transferred to a Coronary Care Unit, which is only for cardiac patients. To my teacher, who definitely will be reading this, I swear I was not the problem, I did nothing wrong! To the rest of you, suffice to say that the horror stories I'd heard were far more livid than I thought. I will not get into what the problem or actually this should be in plural, since there were multiple problems was/were, since that would be pointless, so I would just say that I'm ecstatic with this transfer and I cannot wait to really throw myself at cardiology and the hunky doctors!

I've spent two days at the CCU and I'm loving it! I've seen several different procedures already and I feel like this could turn into the bestest experience ever! So far I've seen a PCI operation, loop recorders being inserted, several pacemaker operations, one bi-ventricular defibrilator  inserted, one Angio operation and "a live one", which is having a patient brought up to the ward, who was in the middle of a heart attack, so that the PCI was urgent, they don't call them "live ones", I do, they call them "primaries". That particular procedure was amazing, because the other ones are elective, but this one - he came in, they had to clear the schedule and get in there and fix the problem quickly. The patient was a young man, in his early 50s - the surprising part was that he didn't look as if he was in the middle of a heart attack, apparently having a heart attack becomes you. After the doctors managed to evacuate the clot, they showed it to me - they actually used the word "big" to describe it, which it wasn't - not to me, but if you imagine the smaller arteries that are usually very narrow, then I guess that this particular clot could be described as being a big one...

I'm excited to see what the following weeks will bring, hopefully a lot of educational experiences and a lot of very advanced procedures, that in the end will help me to put into words what exactly I've gained from my going abroad. I mean, they already told me that they wanted to hire me, so I got of to a great start, eh? Let the good times roll, and how about that bottle of Dom Perignon, I think it's long overdue!

-xoxo-