heartlaboratory

[heartlaboratory]

A short horror story:

Camille decided to face her fear to undergo total anesthesia for a mini-invasive procedure, something that will be over in just few hours. Her doctor told her that the heart defect she has since birth will neve be something to worry about and it gives her no more than a slight heart murmur but, having the money, she thought it's a good idea to do some "personal growth" and overcome this fear.

She suddenty woke up in the middle of what should have been a routine surgery. The anesthetist couldn't know she has a rare mutation that makes her refractory to the drug used to make her fall asleep and the effect lasted for a too short amount of time. Nothing could have prepared her to that situation. She's conscious but can't talk or move, she's still lying on the surgery bed, her chest is cut open and the surgeon is pumping manually her heart. On the background the sound of a flatlined monitor echoes in the room. "Pump it faster!" screams a surgeon. "We are losing her!!" shouts another one.

For completely unknown reasons she experienced a cardiac arrest during the procedure and they had to perform a thoracotomy on her trying to restart her heart given the fact that adrenaline and compressions failed.

The surgeon's strong hand, covered by a green latex glove, is giving to her heart manual compressions that are so effective that enough blood is ejected from the organ enabling her to stay conscious during the whole thing.

Can you imagine the level of terror she's experiencing?

[heartlaboratory]

For the Sky Race Trophy (a 150 km bicicle competition held in the mountains at high altitude) the Laboratory participates with a small team of athletes. The peculiarity is that those athletes, all volunteers from the young interns from different Laboratory's unit, are using the race for a study about the heart. For the study they are all going to wear a special screen on their chest that will make some part of their external thorax "invisible" exposing the surface of their hearts. An action cam is placed on the bicicle handlebar and pointed at the heart to record in live the athlet's cardiac cycle. The aim of the study is to analize the external heart activity during strenous physical efforts at high altitude. People can watch the live too by simply following a link on the Laboratory's site for fundrising.

It seems that the most interesting live is from Nicole, with her having the majority of viewers. She's a young and good looking woman from the public relation unit but she has a quite scarce fitness level. The head of the study told her it was probably not a good idea to enroll in the experiment but she insisted and now she has become one of the most interesting subject of the whole project. After only few dozens of chilometers she's literally out of breath and her heart, clearly pulsating in the center of her chest, is about to explode being stuck at around 190 bpm for almost an entire hour now. Normally the organization would suggest her to stop but she knew the risks and this is part of the study so she is told to give her best. The coronary arteries around her crazy-beating heart are bulging, trying to bring enough nourishment to the organ under such an uncommon circumstance. On her face an expression of pain and suffering is becoming more and more evident (she probably has myocardial infarction-like symptoms). The whole team looks carefully knowning her heart is very close to its limits waiting to see what is going to happen when that line is crossed.

[heartlaboratory]

At the police department rumor has it that a strange new criminal is active in town. An identikit is not available nor it has ever been seen in action; it doesn' take anything from its victims nor it hurts them in any way. Some local young women reports fragments of faded memories, dream-like memories, of strange events... Through hypnotic regression, detectives managed to obtain better description of the crime. The victims report almost the same story: to have gone to bed like any other normal night yet they sudden woke up in the dark, naked and completely tied up by a rope on the ground in different position, so tight to be unable to move. An obscure figure is holding a stethoscope on their chest, listening to their terrified hammering heart, seemingly recording its beating. Suddently the victim wakes up the next day having almost no memory of what happened the passed night. The heartbeat stealer they call it.

[heartlaboratory]

A friend of yours worked in the entertainment for years, she's a singer, an actress, a voice actress. She had a role in different local productions for the radio, the theatre and some local TV channels and now she's starting a new project. By "exploiting" one of her closest friends that is a physician, she's making a series of brief episodes abou health, diseases prevention and good life habits. The series, named "Health Pills", will be uploaded on her social network. You watched all the previous episodes and you always can't wait to see her next upload of the series given her manner so vibrant, funny and pationate. The fourth episode, the one about the heart, was actually a true treat: It started with her recovering from a stress test on the treadmil. After few seconds from the opening she lifted her top exposing her breast and an hand -her doctor friend's one- from the outside of the screen reached her chest placing there a stethomicrophone. A quite loud thumping sound emerged from your earphones as she started the commentary saying: "The constant rhythmic sound you are listening to is my real heartbeat recorded right after a stress test..." Well, it's not rhythmic at all given the fact you can clearly hear a lot of PVCs... Suddently with your fantasy you drift away... ... somehow thinking about what would have happened if the test was longer or more intense... ... maybe her heart would have experienced a major arrhythmia... ... maybe the episode would have been abour CPR...

For some strange reasons you would have liked it even more.

[heartlaboratory]

Together with your friend Violet you go for a long bike ride along the artificial canals in the woods near the place where you live. It's a hot, beautiful summer day, perfect for those outdoor activities. She's wearing a sport suit made of a pair of grey leggins with a nice vertical white strip and a navy blu bra. She rides an old blu bike without the gear shift that makes the combination of the effort and the torrid weather even more effective. After a couple of hours of riding you both stop near a clearing and she looks at you with a big smile. Her moral seems high but looking with more attention you notice she's pretty worn: her skin looks reddish and covered with sweat while her legs muscles are visibly tense and her breathing is labored. You know she's wearing a smartwatch with an app she uses for sport that shares the biometric data with friends engaged in the same training session. Having the same app and being part of her friends list, you can't resist the curiosity and look at her vitals detected in live. The screen on your phone says she has an heart rate of around 186 beats per minute, her breathing rate counts around 46 movements per minute and her body temperature is 37.8 °C. Knowing that her struggle is real and seeing her little oveheated pump struggling with the power of your imagination you ask her if everything is ok. "I can clearly feel my heart beating like crazy and I love it -she answers- I love to push my body to its limits, it's incredible to see what it can do and it makes me feel so alive! Come here, feel it too!" He takes one of your hands and places it on her soft chest. The beat is so strong it feels like you're directly touching the organ. Her heart contractions are so forced you know that any interference with its activity could have an enormous impact... what if?

[heartlaboratory]

At a tea party with some "friends", Nicoletta had the courage to make a terrible joke about a piece of dress that she didn't noticed you were actually wearing... Under normal circumstances you would have ignored it but you're secretly a magician of hundreds of years of age and such a lack of respect can not pass unpunished. That's why you decided to cause her a minor (hopefully but who cares) heart decompensation casting on her: -GRASPHEART- The fingers of an astral hand appears in her mediastinum and wrap around her heart. Her rhythmic contractions, that you can clearly feel like the figers were your own, becomes faster and faster as the grip becomes closer reducing the available space for the organ to properly fill with new blood. An expression of great concern appeared on her face perfectly feeling that something very wrong was happening to her heart. To have a better experience of her punishement you used the third eye spell to see through her green sweater and her prosperous chest under which her heart was on the point of failing, overwhelmed by the supernatural grip. The astral hand was so thight around her poor heart that it started skipping and stumbling desperately trying to sustain the blood circulation Nicoletta's body needed so much to keep working. Finally the effort became too much for her little heart and its desperate rhythm precipitated into ventricular fibrillation. The silence in which the whole room fell as she started gasping for apparently no reasons turned into horror as she simply collapsed on the wooden bench where she was sitting. Quickly Charlotte, another guest at the party who is also a physician, took a stethoscope out of her bag and rapidly placed it on Nicoletta's chest trying to understand what was going on, suspecting a cardiovascular crysis. The moment she heard no sound at all she exclaimed in despair: "Oh my God, the heart completely ceased to beat!!" She started CPR on Nicoletta's body but it was all in vain. Captured by the pleasure of touching and grasping such a young and snappy heart you exagerated and simply crashed it, severely damaging its essential internal structures... Now that Nicoletta lies on the ground and everyone else is petrified in place, through the astral fingers that still wrap her heart you can feel no more than senseless spasms coming from it. Pushed by an incomprehensible sense of compassion you try to pump it manually a couple of time but when it doesn't work and her heart becomes literally immobile and her body lifeless, the same though as before arise: who cares.

[heartlaboratory]

What would you do if your date shows up with a strange body implant that like a porthole let you see the inside of her chest? Can you image to see her beating heart for the whole appointment?

She sais it's for a continuous medical exam she's undergoing, there's a camera that is recording her heart movements but the "window" enables her cardiologist to assess her heart directly. It can be made opaque for everyday life but she decided to left it transparent... just for the occasion.

[heartlaboratory]

Fabién completely ignored the police warning to stay at home that night: a crazy psycopath, evaded from the sanatorium, was probably lurking in the area.

A threat that became very real in her mind only when almost all the lights in the multi-level underground car parking went off and she started hearing sinister laughs in the dark and the screech of a pointed metal object scraping against the concrete wall.

Now, scared to death, trying to hide somewhere somehow, her mind is saturated by the crazy beating of her own heart: "It's throbbing must be so loud that almost surely the killer can hear it in the shadows. Each stroke guides the monster closer and closer"

Petrified against a column, she waits to feel the cold steel making its inesorable way through her chest, directly to the epicenter of such an earthquake, finally terminating it once and for all.

There, she can do nothing beside just feeling what she thinks are going to be the last beats of her own heart.

BA-BOOM BA-BOOM BA-BOOM...........

[heartlaboratory]

Part of an influencer job is to present and test products live streaming. For a random series of event the logistical office of a pharmaceutical company, which asked her to test some products, sent her an experimental compound to make flesh invisible for research purposes instead of a moisturizing cream for the body. She realized something was wrong by looking at the comments of the live stream... "Oh my God, what's this massive thing pulsing on my chest??" she screamed terrified. "That's your heart!! And it looks really unhealthy!!" "Smoke, alchool and total lack of physical training were pretty effective on you" "guys, we're probably looking at her last beats" some people answered... and sadly they were pretty right...

[heartlaboratory]

At the paranormal museum she found a very strange tissue. It's strange cause when she passed it in front of her you could literally see what was going on inside her body.

[heartlaboratory]

Fabienne, a german PhD student, has recently discussed her thesys. She designed a new diagnostic machine that is able to make internal organs visible. it's something similar to an x-ray even though less powerfull but instead of radiations it uses magnetical fields and can be considered safer for the patient. She's now celebrating with her friends in her apartment. They are all drinking a lot and given the fact that the PhD discussion was held in camera she decides to give a live demonstration on what her invention does to all her friends. She gets up from the table where they were talking and drinking, she adjusts the machine's active component (a white screen) height at the level of her chest and having turned the object on she places herself right in front of it. She's standing in pose, smiling, some glasses of wine made her cheecks a little red. A white glow of light is emanated by the screen and almost immediately an important portion of her torso disappears, even the white sleveless dress she's wearing becomes invisible. On the contrast, on the inside, shadows are very visible. The audience of friends is pretty impressed. "Are those your bones?" asks someone. "They look like your chest major blood vessels!" states someone else. "Yes! Yes! - answers Fabienne - but can you see my herz?! it should be right in the center of my chest! and it's beating pretty fast!! I'm so fascinated by cardiology, and the heart is my favourit topic at all in science!!!" The shadow of her beating heart is actually very clear. "Faby, we can see even your tits.." says one of the guests, holding an empty bottle of wine. Suddenly Helena, a med student that reached the party after the shift, gets up staggering and visibly drunk. She holds the stethoscope she are still wearing and gets closer to Fabienne. "Faby... can I listen to it?? please, please, please" She asks slurring. "Oooooh" Answers Fabienne blushing even more. Her heart starts beating like crazy.

[heartlaboratory]

At the "Dusty Desert Sound Festival" there's a very peculiar DJ tonight. He's know for a very different show that happens each time during his parties, he calls it: "the cardio-beat dance". After a couple of hours from the beginning of the party he takes a volunteer, places it in front of the "Beats Wall" and puts an electode and a sthethoscope on her/his chest. The volunteer's heartbeat is used as a bance for an improvised mix. A beating heart is projected on the volunteer's chest, more or less in the correct anatomical position, reporting the beats per minute to give "see through" idea. The volunteer remains in front of the wall for some time while the audience dances to the rhythm of his/her heartbeat.

Simòne waited for that moment the whole night, doing anything to speed up her heart rate. She jumped, screamed, drunk, took stimulants... anything. When the time came she was so wild the DJ obviously chose her. Even before the steth and the electrode were placed anyone know it would have been something extreme just by looking at how her chest was throbbing.

"Wow, more than 200 bpm! unbelievable, baby!! We have a crazy lady here!!" Exclaimed the DJ when her heartbeat appeared on her chest.

The party went wild with the whole audience dancing at such a crazy rhythm.

(what's not said is that by exhausting so much her heart like this, Simòne had major arrhythmias for a month after the party)

[heartlaboratory]

Claudia, one of your friends, invited you to attend to her beach volley match. The match is held indoor so, given the fact that its summer and in this country summer is also very humid, temperatures are going to be torrid. Beside this fact you're still quite surprised to see that the majority of the players are playing naked, females too (in this parallel univers human are not ashamed by their own bodies). After all sweating is the best way to cool down. She's quite skinny but look really good with that blue bikini, you always liked her so, secretely, you're very happy to see her playing covered just with air. Given the fact that the playground is going to be free the whole day, organizers decided to complete the tournament without skippying to next day.

Some hours have passed and she has played for a lot of time now. Room temperature went higher than 36°C for the whole last matches and now Claudia looks pretty torn. She's always been a warrior, someone who don't surrender easily but all that jumping in this particular condition had an effect on her too. She's covered by sweat, her skin has assumed a reddish tone and her panting has become so deep anyone can clearly hear her fast inspirations and exales. The thing that tunrs on a light in your mind though is the fact that her entire upper body is rhythmically shaking like it's thrusted by a sort of internal earthquake. You suddenly realize that you recently activated a medical app on your phone developped at the laboratory where you work that makes possible medical analises through the phone camera thanks to experimental sensors placed in the camera. You activate the app and feel pretty lifted up by the fact you already added her profile. A thin ensamble of laser rays, almost invisible, is projeced towards her and the selected target orgal (obviously Claudia's heart) becomes visible on the screen. Her heart is beating like crazy, not only considering the pace but also the strenght of each beat, the app says her heart is beating at around 195 bpm but it's probably even higher. It's something that is completely out of any safety zone for someone who is 34 years old... and not even a younger person should push its heart like this. The device can also work as a digital stethoscope and by wearing headphones to listen to her you remained schoked. Her blood is pushed so violently that it's making strange wooshing-like noises by rubbing against her heart internal structures, sounds that almost cover up her slamming valves. Suddenly the software gives a diagnosis: High cardiac risk- probability of a sudden cardiac arrest of 89%-potentially lethal arrhythias occurring. By looking at her detected heart electrical activities, her organ is so over-stimulated that PVCs and VTACs burst are already present. You know exactly what to do, Claudia's life has an 89% probability to end in the next few minutes and it's increasing. You decide to get up from your seat and run towards the referee to show him the analysis of your device. One of the players' heart is going to stop very soon.

A second before you move, on the ecg a strange beat appears and suddenly Claudia's heart interrupts any activity, it doesn't even fibrillate, it just ceases to beat as silence arises from your headphones. Terrified you see her taking a couple of deep breath, the ball she was holding fell on the ground and her left hand is placed in between her bare breasts... after a moment she collapses on the ground.

You have always wanted to place your hand on her chest to feel her heartbeat but now you have to do this to make it beat again. CPR has to be started immediately.

[heartlaboratory]

Due to a congenital heart defect her aortic valve, the one which separates her left ventricle from the rest of her body, grew with only 2 of the 3 naturally intended leaflets. Beside a very visible neck pulse, low blood pressure and a low tolerance to phisical efforts this has never been a problem for her but to avoid possible future consequences like heart wall hypertrophy (that would make her heart extremely visible under her thin rib cage) and important arrhythmias she decided to undergo a new experimental slightly invasive surgical procedure. Very thin probes will be inserted through her left side chest, they will enter inside the heart from a safe point and after reaching her aortic valve the surgeon will have to reshape it while the heart is still normally beating. She will be awake during the whole procedure, with just a local pain killer administered to the point in which the probes will be inserted (that's the reason why she decided for this procedure: she's scared by general anesthesia). She passed all the important preliminary controls to verify she was suited for the procedure and the intervention began.

Was it the idea of having small blades inside the center of her life? Was the fact that an iportant group of people (gathered to watch the experimental procedure) was looking at her completely naked holding her bare breasts? Was it having her beating heart clearly visible on a see through screen or the fact it was being manipulated right under her hand while she was feeling each beat? The moment after the probes penetrated her flesh a load of adrenaline rushed through her bloodstream making her heart rate to skyrocket.

Looking concerned at the screen, where the image of her damaged slamming valve taken by one of the probes was represented, the surgeon said: "She's too scared! All these movements are making the procedure too dangerous, a single mistake and she's gone. We have to put her to sleep..." Her entire chest was literally bounching with each heartbeat.

A strong aerial anesthetic was administered through the tube attached to her nose and before she had an heart attack realizing she was about to receive general anesthesia she fell asleep.

[heartlaboratory]

In the short movie represented, taken from the university archive, you can look at a curious experiment that took place in the firs years of the '900, when physiologist were working on the relationship between electricity and the human body. A brief report accompanies the movie. Colette De La Beatrix was the countess of a small town called "Holy Lady in the Countryside", she was married to a professor of that time. Unfortunately at the age of 32 she suffered a terrible accident while riding her horse. She was embossed down from the saddle and the horse stomped her right in the center of her chest, destroying the frontal part of her rib cage. She was saved miraculously by the university's surgeon that had to remove her sternum leaving her most vital organ covered only by a thin layer of skin. Usually she wore an iron plate to cover and protect her exposed heart. Her husband convinced her to take advantage of the events and participate in his studies about electrophysiology. She happily took part to them and once results were gathered they decided to show them to the other professors and film the experiment. The movie starts with the countess sitting on a woodden bench. her entire chest is exposed and the shape of her beating heart is clearly visible. A rudimental microphone, linked to a gramophone, is held by a belt on the center of her chest and picks up her heartbeat. Two electrodes are attached on the oppiside sides of her heart linking the organ with what was probably a battery. The report is divided into different parts:

Initial- Countess initial heart rate: 85 bpm Showing the audience her condition and her synus rhythm at rest. Single electrical pulses are charged on her heart to demonstrate electricity can start artificial systoles. Audience is encouraged to feel the countess' carotid pulse to further proove the experiment effectiveness. This part ends with a note hand-written. "remember to tell the audience to never directly touch her heart to avoid dangerous ahrrythmias".

Part 2- Artificial pacing at 120bpm The machine delivers a series of consecutive impulses to create an artificial rhythm. The countess's heart reacts to each pulse correctly contracting in a new manually-induced pace. Audience is encouraged to feel the countess' carotid pulse under the influence of the continuous pulses. NOTE: After the pulses are interrupted the countess' heart recovers its initial pace immediately.

Part 3- Reaching physiological limit, 187bpm To demonstrate total control on the countess' heart rhythm the heart is artificially paced at her maximum heart rate (220 - her age 32). electrical pacing can realize the same results as a strenuous physical effort. The battery completely bypassed her local pacemaker. Audience is encouraged to feel the countess' carotid pulse and look at her beating heart. NOTE: Frank and Starling were right, the artificial rhythm seems hard to sustain for her system. The fast her heart gets the less efective its beating becomes. NOTE2: Her heart takes some long pauses in order to recover.

Part 4- Beyond physiological limits 240bpm The domain over her natural pacemaker is so absolute that its natural limit can be higly bypassed. The heart is paced at an innatural rhythm. Audience is encouraged to feel the countess' carotid pulse and look at her beating heart. NOTE: Audience report that just a very tiny wave of blood can be felt at her neck after each heart contraction. NOTE2: The countess's heart seems unable to follow each electrical pulse as some dyastoles seem abolished in a tetanus like manner. NOTE3: The procedure is interrupted as the countess lost consciousness for a brief period of time. NOTE4: Once the machine is turned off a long period of asystole is seen with subsequent ahrrythmias after the spontaneous pulsation restarted. Heart exhaustion? another hand-written part: "I should have never tried this on my wife"

What the report doesn't says is that countess Colette De La Beatrix died of sudden cardiac arrest few days late.

[heartlaboratory]

A brief daydream:

You're attending the first year at the Med School and you've been invited to a BDay party. Once there, with surprise (and great joy) you see Marika, that is attending the anatomy class with you. The instant after you see her, thanks to the cardiophilia you discovered while attending the lectures, your imagination start to fly. Her attractive and well proportioned body shape gets separated by the room in the background and her clothes disappear. Suddently her heart appears in the center of her chest with its beating clearly audible in your ears. It looks a little "artistical" but you haven't studied a lot these days. Since you met her few weeks ago, she's always been a little chaotic and over the top so her always overexcited heart must be very irregular and all the PVCs it throws appear clearly in front of your eyes. You return to reality quite quickly but now you can't stop thinking about her heartbeat... like it's calling you to listen to it with every beat. Who knows... you are attending the lessons toghether, maybe you'll have the occasion to auscultate her in the real world.

[heartlaboratory]

Fear.

She went to the bathroom at late night and when she came back she saw a stranger in her house. The stranger pointed a light towards her and a rush of adrenaline flooded her bloodstrea. Her heart started pounding so hard its crazy beating became almost audible through the whole room... BA-BOOM-BA-BOOM-BA-BOOM