Researching Meds and Other Medical Jargon

A teeny bit of an emergency happened this afternoon. While Mom was at the Chapel attending mass, Dad's heart rate zoomed to 206 beats per minute. His nurse phoned Mom and she comes running to his room to find it full of doctors, fellows, residents and nurses. She was probably all panicky and nervous as heck.

But dear Mother is a pillar of strength and in a few minutes, she had me on the phone, telling me to look up the words "tacky something" and "poly-scheme something". Hehehe. Her words, not mine. Smart woman that I am (hehehehe) AND well read (another hehehe), I figured out TACHYCARDIA. I have NO idea where I read that but it looked and sounded medical enough and so that's what I typed up. As for the poly-something. I had absolutely no idea what that was and I told Mom that it could be anything!

Thank goodness for the internet, that's all I can say. And to my credit, of COURSE I knew enough to look up the necessary stuff on the credible sites like the Mayo Clinic or WebMD! Do these dang Fellows and Residents thing I'm an imbecile?!?!? Hello!!!!! I don't need Nikon rifle scopes to narrow in on a particular site just to be able to get an accurate representation of a medical condition! Jerks and total know-it-alls. Hmp!

Anyhoo, I spent the afternoon immersed in cyberspace looking at terms such as:
tachcardia, paroxysmal tachycardia (that's the poly-something Mom had overheard), isoptin, cordarone, and other generic medicine names. And I as I was texting Mom the information, I had to sift through my brain as to what I remembered of Dad's medical conditions and the various medicines he was taking so that I could pass on adverse effects, symptoms, etc, to Mom. Needless to say, my brain was a little bit overworked as I typed in words I didn't know the meaning of, looked at anatomical drawings of the heart that I didn't really care to see. Overall, an exhausting brain exercise.

Which, technically, is NOTHING compared to what Mom goes through each and every minute of everyday that she stays with Dad in the ICU. I don't know how she does it, but she does. Yes, she's very exhausted at night, literally dropping off to sleep like a baby on her bed, but she's up first thing in the morning and off she goes to the hospital. Sometimes I feel it's better for her that Dad's in the ICU instead of a regular room because SHE's regulated (sort of) by the strict visiting hours that the icu adopts. Sort of, like I said. She has a way of making the nurses bend over to give her a few minutes here, a few minutes there. Hehehe. Typical Mother :)