The Cardio Room

The Cardio O.R. was quiet and a bit more serious than some of the other Operating rooms I had worked in. It had a hush to it. There seemed to be added risk with it. Beyond the swinging door were mayo trays, blue sheets, and instruments ready and waiting when the nurse brought the patient in. We stood gowned, gloved, and masked. The heart is an intense organ to get to! Modern techniques are ever evolving but layers of the body are opened up and retractors help hold the widest possible view of a human chest cavity so that an invasive operation can begin, that will hopefully extend a life.

We don’t know what led the person here except that his or her heart is in some sort of trouble. At the looks of people, you cannot always tell that they are or ever will be a candidate for The Cardio Room. I had a nurse teach me this important lesson one day as she noticed my perplexed expression when a basically lean and healthy looking patient was wheeled into the Operating Room. “The way people handle stress is a huge factor.”

We do cardio exercise to avoid cardio rooms like this! But there are other measures we should look at too, especially if we’re feeling “sluggish”. Maybe we do need a good workout. But developing room for devotion: writing in our phone notes, reading the Bible or a good book… can become room to care for the heart as well as our family time and reworking our schedule. It will bring a hush with it to the room. It will spread a peace over our hearts and guard them. We can set up a new way to deal with stressors! Deep breathing and talking about our stressors are two of the top ways of dealing with heart aches and pains. Don’t hold your feelings in. Process them. Let God in, to work on your heart. Find a team or group to be apart of that will bring support to your life instead of adding strain. Locate a church either online or in person to show up with in community. Don’t ignore your problems. Tell somebody. Ask people for solutions and together you can make progressive changes. We’ve got a few more blogs about aches of the heart set up for the next couple of Thursdays. Thanks for sticking with us as we make our way to recovery! First: Here’s a Courage Question for you:

Who’s holding your heart?