#cardiac - Hello Poetry

I feel these erratic rhythms beneath my ribs, Each heartbeat becomes a precarious dance Between normality and disarray Until my body surrenders, and it all becomes a blur. Time stretches in the QT interval, Too long, too dangerous, A simple electrical glitch That turns my pulse into a sprinting beat pounding out warnings. My ICD becomes my shield, While adrenaline lurks like an assassin Waiting to trigger the storm. As stress and excitement become calculated risks, And life becomes a minefield. My ECG reveals all in peaks and valleys, each prolonged wave becomes a reminder that my heart keeps its own peculiar time. This electrical maze requires vigilance A constant awareness of my heart's delayed signature, Its prolonged encore after each performance, Laying bare my vulnerability as I dice with death every time. *…And in all honesty It scares me.* ©️Lizzie Bevis

0

Dec 29, 2024

Dec 29, 2024 at 10:26 PM UTC

Lizbev37

Testing my Mortality

I feel these erratic rhythms beneath my ribs, Each heartbeat becomes a precarious dance Between normality and disarray Until my body surrenders, and it all becomes a blur. Time stretches in the QT interval, Too long, too dangerous, A simple electrical glitch That turns my pulse into a sprinting beat pounding out warnings. My ICD becomes my shield, While adrenaline lurks like an assassin Waiting to trigger the storm. As stress and excitement become calculated risks, And life becomes a minefield. My ECG reveals all in peaks and valleys, each prolonged wave becomes a reminder that my heart keeps its own peculiar time. This electrical maze requires vigilance A constant awareness of my heart's delayed signature, Its prolonged encore after each performance, Laying bare my vulnerability as I dice with death every time. *…And in all honesty It scares me.* ©️Lizzie Bevis

53

You take heart right from my bleeding chest Suffering cardiac arrest All fears it seems are second-guessed Scared this attempt will work out like the rest Hurt a few too many occasions before Tip-toeing on ever shaking floor It's obvious you don't want me anymore Need reason to keep on breathing for Crashing lightning Rolling thunder Caught in current and it's pulling me under I cannot help but stop and wonder Why my dreams are torn asunder No space left inside head Taken up by lies you said Wish I felt happy instead Infected me with a sense of dread It's not your fault Torn in two I have myself to blame for believing you Your eyes oceans I fell into I'm drowning in those pools of blue Looking at yesterday Tried so hard to walk away Can't break chains around my feet Without your touch incomplete

0

Aug 24, 2024

Aug 24, 2024 at 7:46 AM UTC

AmandaKayBurke

Cardiac Arrest

You take heart right from my bleeding chest Suffering cardiac arrest All fears it seems are second-guessed Scared this attempt will work out like the rest Hurt a few too many occasions before Tip-toeing on ever shaking floor It's obvious you don't want me anymore Need reason to keep on breathing for Crashing lightning Rolling thunder Caught in current and it's pulling me under I cannot help but stop and wonder Why my dreams are torn asunder No space left inside head Taken up by lies you said Wish I felt happy instead Infected me with a sense of dread It's not your fault Torn in two I have myself to blame for believing you Your eyes oceans I fell into I'm drowning in those pools of blue Looking at yesterday Tried so hard to walk away Can't break chains around my feet Without your touch incomplete

26

Hearts are not crystals But still they shatter. A heart has no brains But tears it often rains. Hearts have no eyes But still detect lies. So what exactly are hearts? The Cardiac Paradox.

0

Nov 15, 2019

Nov 15, 2019 at 7:31 AM UTC

Atul

The Cardiac Paradox

Hearts are not crystals But still they shatter. A heart has no brains But tears it often rains. Hearts have no eyes But still detect lies. So what exactly are hearts? The Cardiac Paradox.

8

If you're a patient in a hospital, wouldn't you want to know exactly how many people have died in the room you're currently sleeping in? How many hearts have stopped beating, how many lungs have deflated, how many pupils have stopped responding to light— how long CPR was performed before Time of Death was called? How many DNR patients waltzed into the afterlife without so much as a half-hearted chest compression? Ribs can break during CPR. How many cracked ribs have echoed across the walls of your hospital room? x Eve was made from Adam's rib. God plucked the bone and fashioned it into a subservient woman to replace the wild one, the first one, the no good one, the woman made from the same soil as Adam: Lilith. x We break ribs, break wishbones, break most things we don't understand. A confused patient will take out his IV, his PICC line, even pull at his chest tube or his LVAD driveline. If it doesn't make sense, we will try to eliminate it in the sake of normality. x Some time in August, we had two codes within one hour. After 30 or so minutes of chest compressions, they pronounced the second man dead. He wasn’t my patient that night, and I didn’t know him. I think his ribs snapped under Alyssa’s hands when she tried to revive him. And what does that feel like? Not just the desperate rush of adrenaline, of trying to bring someone back to life—not just the emotional, but the physical of it all. The cracking of the bone beneath the heels of your hands. Your fingers laced on top of each other pounding and pounding and pounding against the sternum. One, two. One, two. One, two. The bone cleaves in half. And how much pressure does it take? I’m sure science could tell us, but how does it feel in your arms, in your shoulders— will your muscles remember the strength it takes and stop you next time? x How hard did God have to try when he ripped out Adam's rib to make Eve? And how long did it take Adam to recover from the loss? (Maybe he never did.) x Healthcare is still so barbaric. You must hurt to help. Saw through the sternum to get to the heart. Insert a painful tube to remove the excess fluid. Drill through the skull and remove potentially useful brain matter. I have nightmares of tripping over IV tubing and ripping out PICC lines. I am terrified of dropping someone's chest tube on the floor, of it ripping violently out of their lungs. It's not my blood, it's some else's, and that makes it so much worse. Being responsible for another human's well-being is actually terrifying. I just want to be helpful. I don’t want to hurtful. But so often, I find myself damaging the ones I love. x I would rather have my brain-dead sternum sawed open than rot in some hole in the ground like my mother if it would mean that I could be useful. And all we really want is to be useful. To feel something. To be something. To be proud like the original sin. Remove my ribs. All 24 of them. Make them into several new women with several new names and faces and eye colors and skin colors. Their lives would be more beneficial than my death ever could be. Like Eve with Lilith, replace the bad, with the seemingly good. Replace the soil with the body. It all has to come from somewhere. x How to keep the self close and yet distant from trauma.

0

Dec 11, 2017

Dec 11, 2017 at 2:52 PM UTC

taylor-st-onge

It’s a Widespread Myth That Men Have Fewer Ribs Than Women Because the Bible Told You So

If you're a patient in a hospital, wouldn't you want to know exactly how many people have died in the room you're currently sleeping in? How many hearts have stopped beating, how many lungs have deflated, how many pupils have stopped responding to light— how long CPR was performed before Time of Death was called? How many DNR patients waltzed into the afterlife without so much as a half-hearted chest compression? Ribs can break during CPR. How many cracked ribs have echoed across the walls of your hospital room? x Eve was made from Adam's rib. God plucked the bone and fashioned it into a subservient woman to replace the wild one, the first one, the no good one, the woman made from the same soil as Adam: Lilith. x We break ribs, break wishbones, break most things we don't understand. A confused patient will take out his IV, his PICC line, even pull at his chest tube or his LVAD driveline. If it doesn't make sense, we will try to eliminate it in the sake of normality. x Some time in August, we had two codes within one hour. After 30 or so minutes of chest compressions, they pronounced the second man dead. He wasn’t my patient that night, and I didn’t know him. I think his ribs snapped under Alyssa’s hands when she tried to revive him. And what does that feel like? Not just the desperate rush of adrenaline, of trying to bring someone back to life—not just the emotional, but the physical of it all. The cracking of the bone beneath the heels of your hands. Your fingers laced on top of each other pounding and pounding and pounding against the sternum. One, two. One, two. One, two. The bone cleaves in half. And how much pressure does it take? I’m sure science could tell us, but how does it feel in your arms, in your shoulders— will your muscles remember the strength it takes and stop you next time? x How hard did God have to try when he ripped out Adam's rib to make Eve? And how long did it take Adam to recover from the loss? (Maybe he never did.) x Healthcare is still so barbaric. You must hurt to help. Saw through the sternum to get to the heart. Insert a painful tube to remove the excess fluid. Drill through the skull and remove potentially useful brain matter. I have nightmares of tripping over IV tubing and ripping out PICC lines. I am terrified of dropping someone's chest tube on the floor, of it ripping violently out of their lungs. It's not my blood, it's some else's, and that makes it so much worse. Being responsible for another human's well-being is actually terrifying. I just want to be helpful. I don’t want to hurtful. But so often, I find myself damaging the ones I love. x I would rather have my brain-dead sternum sawed open than rot in some hole in the ground like my mother if it would mean that I could be useful. And all we really want is to be useful. To feel something. To be something. To be proud like the original sin. Remove my ribs. All 24 of them. Make them into several new women with several new names and faces and eye colors and skin colors. Their lives would be more beneficial than my death ever could be. Like Eve with Lilith, replace the bad, with the seemingly good. Replace the soil with the body. It all has to come from somewhere. x How to keep the self close and yet distant from trauma.

87

Hollow husk of man sits in dark room A tickling of the cardiac muscle

0

Jun 2, 2015

Jun 2, 2015 at 3:07 PM UTC