Any experience with home blood pressure cuff

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, There is a name for chronic high BP. Silent killer.

[krw]

No, they just used the rubber hoses on me. ;-)

Now when I have blood tests I tell the vampire to use the veins on the back of my hands. They always try the wrists first, anyway, but after a few misses they listen.

[krw]

;-)

An auto accident sure wouldn't be good. Be careful!

[Norminn]

Idiots. Probably have tourniquet too tight. It is rare that if one cannot SEE a vein one cannot FEEL it. Tourniquet too tight = vein doesn't fill. With BP cuff on the arm, and inflated to right point, the vein fills and cannot empty so it really stands out. The high number is the pressure of the arteries when the heart contracts, low number is pressure when heart relaxes. Set the BP cuff pressure between the numbers and the arteries are filling up the veins but blood isn't returning to the heart....kind of like the difference between a flat balloon and one filled with air.

I'm a nurse and chicken s--- about needles, so I've always made sure I had a good candidate BEFORE I stuck a needle in. Self-imposed limit was two tries. No babies.

[Peter]

However, unless you suffer from tachycardia (abnormally fast heartbeat), the automated deflation cuffs have been engineered to accurately and rapidly measure the changing pressures as they happen. It's a non-issue. Many doctors offices and hospitals use fully automated inflation/deflation digital blood pressure machines.

[krw]

I like that plan. I've found that if they can't get it in two tries they're not going to get it in six (the same person may get it right the first time next week). Let someone else try.

Many years ago (college days) I had Mono and was going through cycles where my temperature would spike, then I'd turn white as a sheet and start seating buckets as my fever broke. Just as the fever broke a nurse was trying to get some blood. She was visibly shaken and asked, "Are you sick or something?". Even though I'd never felt worse in my life, I burst out laughing. She got someone else to draw the blood.

[Norminn]

I had mono in nursing school, back in the days when student nurses were THE hospital staff. My glands in my neck were huge and my blood count way off, so I was sent to the hematologist, health service worried about leukemia. In all of the hubub, they forgot to send me home for a month like they did all of the others with mono....convinced me for a while that I did have leukemia. Then came the night of my fiancee's senior dance at his college; not about to miss that, temp of 104. Aspirin made the night go well. Then admin found out that I had left the dorm whilst sick and called a meeting of the student body....nurses should know better, blah, blah, blah. They let me work my ass off taking care of eight patients whilst sick ... talk about being damned fatigued!!