Jessica Musinski My aunt and grandfather both had doorbells in their rooms for medical reasons, and my aunt's cat (a Siamese, of course) figured out at some point that he could send the house into an uproar in the wee hours by sitting on one.
Amanda Rose We had a similar-ish situation with an adorable little 2-yr-oldish girl in our Cardiac Intensive Care unit during residency. She discovered that if she unplugged her artificial heart, it caused everybody to run into the room, which delighted her immensely.
( Because of her messed up cardiac physiology that had her on an artificial heart in the first place, and the raft of meds that she was on, she didn't immediately feel the effects of stopping her artificial heart, and of course the personnel who instantly ran into her room got the heart back operational within seconds such that she never experienced serious side effects. And how do you reason with a little girl that unplugging one's heart was a really bad idea? )
Pamela Korda Not really, I think - I'm not sure that model of artificial heart is really meant for outside-the-ICU use (where instant monitoring and staff right out outside are available 24/7) and making the compressed air connectors (linking the heart to the compressor that drove the peristaltic pump) more child-proof would also make it that much harder to switch out the connectors quickly in case of emergency (like mechanical failure of the driving compressor). Once we realized what the kid was doing, the nurses just experimented with various wraps and binders until they found something that worked to protect the connectors.
Inspired by a different thread - Farfelkugel, the multilayered horse name joke in "Robin Hood, Men in Tights". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLtk_VfbKzU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLtk_VfbKzU
No that is the worst thing you could teach your cat! That thing would be going off all hours of the night!
ReplyDeleteJessica Musinski My aunt and grandfather both had doorbells in their rooms for medical reasons, and my aunt's cat (a Siamese, of course) figured out at some point that he could send the house into an uproar in the wee hours by sitting on one.
ReplyDeleteAmanda Rose We had a similar-ish situation with an adorable little 2-yr-oldish girl in our Cardiac Intensive Care unit during residency. She discovered that if she unplugged her artificial heart, it caused everybody to run into the room, which delighted her immensely.
ReplyDelete( Because of her messed up cardiac physiology that had her on an artificial heart in the first place, and the raft of meds that she was on, she didn't immediately feel the effects of stopping her artificial heart, and of course the personnel who instantly ran into her room got the heart back operational within seconds such that she never experienced serious side effects. And how do you reason with a little girl that unplugging one's heart was a really bad idea? )
Pamela Korda Not really, I think - I'm not sure that model of artificial heart is really meant for outside-the-ICU use (where instant monitoring and staff right out outside are available 24/7) and making the compressed air connectors (linking the heart to the compressor that drove the peristaltic pump) more child-proof would also make it that much harder to switch out the connectors quickly in case of emergency (like mechanical failure of the driving compressor). Once we realized what the kid was doing, the nurses just experimented with various wraps and binders until they found something that worked to protect the connectors.
ReplyDelete