It Takes the Bad to Appreciate the Good

Kendra Campbell -- My first cardiac patient had a double above-the-knee amputation. He wore a brown toupee and he didn’t say a word to me during the entire exam. But I guess I can’t blame him for being so untalkative as his skin was made of rubber, and he didn’t have an ounce of blood pumping through his body. His name is Harvey, and he is a cardiac patient simulator. He has real life feeling pulses, blood pressure, respirations, and heart sounds. And the best part is that you can program him to have all kinds of cardiac problems.

Up until this point, I have been doing most of my cardio and respiratory exams on people who are perfectly healthy. I would say the words “patient does not have any murmurs, ejection clicks, snaps or extra heart sounds,” but I really didn’t know what any of those things even sounded like. Now, thanks to Harvey, I’m really starting to get it!

At first, I couldn’t tell the difference between a diastolic and a systolic murmur, but now I can. I can tell the difference between aortic regurgitation and aortic stenosis. I know what crackles and wheezes sound like in the lung fields. And I’m really glad that they have us learn all of this on Harvey first. I know that it will sound a little different in real life, but it’s nice to be able to switch back and forth between various diseases, and to compare the different sounds. It’s really helping me to understand how the sound matches up with the pathophysiology. Before, when I had only heard the normal, healthy sounds, I really didn’t appreciate the pathologies.

I guess it’s kind of similar to things in life. You don’t fully appreciate your health until you’re battling a disease. You can easily take a friend or relative for granted until they’re not in your life anymore. If you move to a third world country after living your whole life in the States (like I did), you don’t realize how much you loved Taco Bell (and other incredible restaurants) until you are forced to eat hundreds of boxes of mac-n-cheese.

For some reason, it seems like humans need a dose of the “bad” or “pathological” to really understand and appreciate the “good.” Harvey still has a lot left to teach me. I guess it’s good that my first patient doesn’t have to actually suffer to teach me about the bad.