One More Week

I was going to try to be clever by entitling this post 'One Week More' and then making up my own lyrics to the song from Les Mis. But I'm lazy. Sorry people.

Instead, we'll arrange today's points by having a countdown.

7. One week left in Rochester. It's hard to believe the summer is nearly over. I have to start thinking about school things again. Bleh.

6.  As a person gets older, their heart starts to create additional small arteries in the heart called collateral arteries. These supply extra blood to the heart when the main ones are blocked or narrow. Collateral arteries in and of themselves are amazing! This explains why people are more likely to have greater damage if they have a heart attack when they're young. You haven't built those collateral arteries yet, so if the artery is blocked, there's no other way around it. Anyway, cool thing I learned on Friday. There's this really random procedure that is done for patients with chronic angina (chest pain) that can't be cured by the normal treatments of angiograms, ballooning, and stenting. These people usually would need a heart transplant. Either the vessels are too far down in the heart, or they are too diseased. They are extremely limited with activity because their hearts are sick. This treatment helps build collateral arteries in the heart. Here's a video because it's nearly impossible to explain.
http://youtu.be/vjU29pxyTlM 
It basically promotes the formation of collateral arteries in the heart. It looks like gigantic blood pressure cuffs that inflate and deflate really quickly. You get it done for one hour, five days a week, for seven weeks.  I saw a guy who had been going to this process for about four weeks. When he started, he was wheeled in with a wheelchair and got short of breath getting onto the table. Now, he can walk in without hardly any issues. It's so cool! Right now, they're doing research on it to see if it could possibly help with peripheral vascular disease. It's not widely used though- the lady who taught me about it told me that a lot of doctors either don't know that it exists or they think it's not reliable. I thought it was fascinating.

5. Some of the nurses on my floor brought in cake, pop, chips, and subs for me and the other girl on my floor. It was the last day that the two of us were working at the same time, but it was really sweet of them. I felt very special.

4. I worked 5 days in a row this week and had two of the same patients for four of those days and one of them for five. This meant that I got to know these patients very well. Getting report in the morning lasted about 20 seconds. I've never had a patient more than three days, so this was really cool to see how they progressed through the week. It also makes taking care of them much easier. You don't have nearly as much stuff to figure out.

3. Some of my roommates went skydiving yesterday. I'm jealous. Someday.

2. It's four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. I haven't done anything productive and it feels amazing.

1. Maybe it's a good thing that there's only a week left cause I've run out of interesting things to say. See you soon!