I am a clip
stuck to a cable dangling from a monitor. I light up with a flick of a switch
and hang on to your finger like i am never letting go. People tape me onto
surfaces, tap me quite often and still find fault with my undying resolve to
give you a discrete value spitting out light more than 20 times a second! Now lets
see someone do that just once!
I am the culmination of the beer lambert law
and the efforts of two people quite sober that they hated beer.
I am the
pulse oximeter probe or the colloquial pulsox!!
Well, today
is just the day i can dwell on the problems i face with you, HUMANS..
Case in
point... i am ever so inconspicuously doing my job in the icu on bed 4 dangling
on his finger and givin you a pulseox reading.. Just because the consultant
feels the value could be wrong, am yanked out of place, tapped on the bed,
pulled off my cable port, checked for dust and then stuck onto his finger
again. Would someone care to find out if my buddy, the inflatable b p cuff is
pumping air at the same time?? Hell, when did someone check the vitals and the
fio2??
After the
ceremonious tap, sanity dawns that a blood gas analysis is required. Well that
was just about time wasn it?
Medical nitwits
not withstanding, the zonked out patients
find me as a substitute for a door knock! Tapping me on the railing to call
the nurse who has dozed off early morning, the resident who has his tail on
fire judging by the number of errands his delayed blood work has mounted on him
and the ever so observant chief nurse who is so vigilant that she can pick up
an alarm from far away but cant quite move out of her seat to do something
about it.
I do get to
hog my limelight once in a while tough. Senior consultants quizzing the
freshers and the exam going studs about the principles of pulse oximetry, the
masimo technology, the physics of beer lambert law, the problem with choosing
the thumb to place a probe, directing a light source on the probe,
methhemoglobinemia etc and the blank faces start giving me some respect which
was so much overdue!
Given the
fact that you are just going to sift through my misery in prose and contemplate
the numerous occasions that i was found to be perennially malfunctioned, let me
get on with my job of lighting people up!
Get a life
people, there are problems beyond the probe for you to jeer.... they lie
entwined between your ears!
