A Hard Stick

Hey World,
So you know (If you read my last blog post) that I'm in clinical rotations for respiratory therapy. Well, one of the job tasks that a respiratory therapist does on a daily basis is an ABG.... ABG? What is this ABG you speak of Vic? Well, my friends an ABG is an Arterial Blood Gas. In simple terms, It is a measurement of blood taken from the artery, unlike the blood that gets drawn in the blood mobiles form the veins. This arterial blood draw can tell you the balance of a persons body in regards to the oxygen, carbon dioxide, and acid/base levels in their body. It can also tell you if their is a problem with a persons breathing, and or kidney function. I know crazy right? That isn't all, it can also tell you the category of disease in the persons body, AND how long the body has been trying to correct that disease. I know, its a lot, but its also very important to the treatment of a patient. How can this one blood draw tell you so  much? Simply put, because it is the blood that comes from the heart. This flow of blood comes pulsating from the heart and tells you what the body is carrying to the extremities. It's coming directly from the source, to give the vital parts the necessary means of survival. It brings the important elements to the body, without it...we would die.

Like Everything does, this got me thinking, and if you can tell where I'm going with this already then good on ya. I started thinking about relationships. All relationships, friends, lovers, marriages, families, we all need love and conversation to keep us going. We all have vital parts that need to be perfused with something from the heart in order to survive. ( I know that's poor sentence structure, but oh well) The thing is, sometimes we lose that "heart fed nutrition" in our relationships. I know I personally can get complacent with friends and kind of back shelf people who have been there for me for years. Why Vic? That is a horrible thing to do....Well, such is life. People change people get older, but that doesn't mean you have to lose touch with them. As you get older your body tends to use blood more in different places than it used to when you were younger. It adjusts. The same with relationships. Sometimes in order to tell the disease, and what needs to be fixed you have to get the issue straight from the heart. Only then can you truly fix and repair the problems with the relationship.

The problem isn't that we don't know how to fix the relationship. The problem is that it sometimes hurts. The  thing about the ABG that differentiates it from a venous draw is, also the bad part. It comes directly from the heart, but that means you have to access it from another part of the body. You have to directly access an artery. The artery is deeper than the vein, and usually not visible from the skin. You literally have to feel for the pulse and "go in blind" and hope that you hit the vessel. That's the issue with relationships sometimes, like with the ABG, you can't feel the pulse, or it is barely palpable. Regardless of the feel of the pulse you still have to find out how to correct this person/relationship. So you have to just "stick" the person and try to feel for the artery. This type of "hard stick" can hurt, and it may cause damage but it can also be perfect and go smoothly. You never know. All you can do is trust yourself, calm your nerves, and "stick em."

Success in drawing an ABG is a rewarding experience. It can also be detrimental to the progression of a patients health. Just knowing what a problem is, opens the door to the knowledge of how to fix it, but we have to be willing to go through a little pain in order to make it work. I" challenge you to reapair some of the diseased parts of your body, your relationships.