Trailing Thoughts

I came across the term “hypercapnic respiratory acidosis” and I was curious what made this different from a regular acidosis. It is a type II Respiratory Failure (Hypercapnic / Hypoxemic Respiratory Failure ) and it is defined as a failure of the lungs to maintain ventilation as evidenced by a PaCO2 > 50 mm Hg. Since alveolar CO2 is elevated O2 must be displaced from the alveoli. This will lead to arterial hypoxemia even in the absence of other derangements in pulmonary function. Often ventilation/perfusion (V/Q) mismatch and/or shunt coexists that aggravates the hypoxemia. The etiology of Type II failure is much more varied and is more commonly encountered clinically. The presence of metabolic compensation determines the chronicity of respiratory failure. So basically it is respiratory acidosis that occurs when the lungs cannot remove all of the carbon dioxide (a normal by-product of metabolism) produced by the body. This causes a disturbance of the acid-base balance in which body fluids become excessively acidic. Therefore it is just another name for respiratory acidosis.
Well… now that I finished discovering what that was, my day is decently well, though I still feel under the weather. My mom went to California the previous week and she bought me some beautiful hair clips. They are cheaper in california than they are in toledo. Toledo will charge about $50 a clip while my mom got me 2 for 30… My hair is really long, so I like having pretty clips to keep my hair out of my face. Well… I should go and eat lunch so I can go back to flower hospital….