Yosemite Sam and the Pulse Ox

It's 3 a.m. and Macayla is hooked up to the pulse oximeter. It's supposed to alarm if her heart rate or oxygen levels get outside set limits. In her case, seizures make her stop breathing and her oxygen saturation can drop as low as 40%. We set the monitor to alarm as soon as it reaches 80%. This lets us know a seizure is occurring. The alarm is four rapid beeps, which repeat every ten or fifteen seconds. Of course, there is the problem of false alarms.

I purposefully waited until after midnight to hook her up since that seems to be the time she has had her last two seizures, if that is what they were. I set the machine up. It was running fine. I got back in bed. Two minutes later the machine alarms, but only two of the four beeps. That is half of the normal alarm. This means false alarm. Silence for a few minutes. The alarm again. Again it is partial. So I go to check the machine and see if Macayla has moved her hand and knocked the probe out of alignment. She has not moved. The machine is reading perfectly. I stand there and stand there. Nothing. No alarms.

This is typical. When we are in the room, no false alarms. As soon as you step out of the room, random alarms. The readings are perfect when you come and check and there is no "recent data" button to see what happened. But turn your back and the pulse ox goes crazy. I think it waits for you to get into another part of the house and then it calls you back! It forces you to sit next to it in the pre-dawn hours. As long as you are watching it, it is silent. As soon as you turn your back, BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! The alarm sounds and I go into a Yosemite Sam tirade of expletives, "Frickin', stinkin', frackin', flippin', blippin'..." This machine is notorious for doing this! It has not alarmed once while I sat here, 20 inches away, and typed. But just wait. As soon as I try and go back to bed, BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! If I were Yosemite Sam, I'd use my six-shooters!