I fondly recall a round I was doing as a student Nurse working in the Emergency Department on a busy evening. I made sure I filed this away in my savory file.
An elderly male patient had been admitted for chest pain and labored breathing after having had open heart four weeks prior. The surgery seemed to have gone well. There were no apparent complications. The wound was healing properly, and all of the blood work was within normal range. Oxygen saturation levels 97%, pulse 80, can’t remember the blood pressure, but it was not alarming. The patient had “unspecified” chest pain and trouble breathing, had trouble focussing, was yelling out “help me, I can’t breathe.”
Antianxiety medication allayed him to a point, but did not soothe the chest pain or emotional tsunami, which like a visceral explosion, an uprising. Something was wrong. The doctors could not “figure out.” I felt useless. The line “relax” becomes ignorant and disrespectful. He would if he knew how to. I never said “relax,” to him.
My first clinical thought was that the patient sorely needed magnesium and not sulfate like the hospitals use, citrate, which is a better quality. I imagined it being injected intravenously into him or topically applied to his skin for quick absorption, seeing him relax more and more. It is incredibly useful in relaxing smooth muscle, including cardiac. Of course I was thinking about all of the B vitamins to relax his nervous system, with the same imagery.
I imagined his blood pH to be perfect with each cell functioning optimally, knowing exactly how to communicate with one another on the greater whole. I imagined him in my own treatment space, soothing music, warm packs, mineral water to sip on. I just listened, and asked him if I could put my hands on his feet. He agreed, and then said “that hurts!” I lightened my touch around the sole of his feet, ran my fingers around his heals and toes. I let him process his thoughts moment by moment. He let me keep massaging his feet. I spoke lightly to him, saying phrases like: “breathing comes easily,” ”breathing comes easy to me” and “it’s easy to breathe.”
As I let go of of his feet, I lightly placed one hand on his heart and the other on his forehead. Aftering blurting out ”Oh, it still hurts” for the last time, he took a long, deep breath in, then out, and began to cry. He called for his wife who had been watching all along, helpless and frightened. They embraced. ”I can breathe! I’m okay honey. Doc, this really works! It does! The pain is better. I can breathe! I want to take her home. Can I doc? I want more of this! Doc, what was it?” The doctor grins and replied “I don’t know,” glances over to me and proceeds with his rounds.