The editorial, “The Truth Is Often Bittersweet: Chocolate Does a Heart Good” (February 2007:11–15), was both informative and entertaining. It is not often that I can laugh and learn at the same time while reading a journal with serious content that encompasses critical care nursing.
For the past 8 years, in my role as cardiac rehabilitation nurse, I have had to answer patients’ questions such as, Is it OK for me to have a piece of chocolate once in a while? As nurses, we serve as a source of confession and information, so it is helpful to be able to offer more accurate and scientifically proven advice. Recently, a patient told me she could visualize the chocolate she had eaten over the holidays as it was clogging up her arteries, so she threw it all away. She was as serious as an alcoholic confessing to having a drink.
The February...