Jett Under Pressure
Please Note: The dog in the accompanying photograph is the subject of the story, but the child or teenager pictured is probably not the patient in the story.When I walked into the room, six year old Chris was screaming. I wasn’t sure that a dog visit was appropriate at that moment, but I thought maybe we could help. Jett and I peeked around the curtain and saw that a nurse’s aide was trying to take Chris’s blood pressure. When Chris saw Jett, he stopped crying and asked if he could pet the dog. Chris’s Mom and the nurse’s aide wanted to take the blood pressure reading first, using a visit with Jett as a reward. Chris refused! He felt nauseous; he was tired; he was in pain, and he simply didn’t want to be bothered any more. Realizing that Chris desperately wanted a dog visit, but that none would be possible until the arm squeezing blood pressure test was over, I suggested to the nurse’s aide that she take Jett’s blood pressure first. She gave me an odd look, and I knew she was questioning my sanity.
I told Jett to jump on to Chris’s bed and lie down. I took the blood pressure cuff and unfastened the velcro band. I put the cuff on top of (not around) one of Jett’s paws, fastened the velcro band to itself, and held the cuff in place. Then I asked the nurse’s aide to turn on the machine. Now she understood what I was doing. She turned the machine away from Chris so that he could not see the “reading” and pushed the start button. The machine buzzed as the cuff filled with air and hissed as the cuff was slowly deflated. Soon the machine beeped, indicating that the test was done. I took the cuff off of Jett, who had not moved or seemed at all uncomfortable about having his blood pressure taken. When Chris saw that the process had neither hurt nor upset Jett, he agreed to have his blood pressure taken, too. The nurse’s aide and Chris’s Mom were both extremely pleased, and Chris did not complain at all when his blood pressure was taken.
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