Blood, Sweat & Tea, page 199 by Tom Reynolds
<< Return to Title Details & Download200
es away.
Someone in my comments box made an off-colour remark and was berated by my regular commenters. I remember this job because while the patient was black, the neighbours who helped her were two white 'granny' types. It was nice to see people being helpful across supposed cultural barriers.
Wake-up Call
I walked into work at 6:15a.m., I'd been awake since half past five. Well, I say awake - what I actually mean is that I was somehow moving around, and managed to drive to work, my mind is still comfortably asleep in bed back home.
I start to check the equipment in my FRU; most of it is there, but I'm missing a few pieces of kit - expensive pieces of kit, probably sitting on a vehicle elsewhere in our complex.
Then my phone went off. 'Hello', said Control, 'We've got a cardiac arrest for you'.
I jumped in the car, checked the address, then saw the age of the patient...
...42.
Control also sent a message that the patient's wife is doing CPR. This meant that he might just have a chance of surviving this...
I raced towards the address; it didn't take long, although because of recent rainfall, I was sliding all over the road.
It's only when I turned onto the road that I realised that I'd been to this address before. I'd spoken to this man previously; he seemed like a decent person. I know him.
I ran in through the door; the hallway was clean but I could not see anyone, so I shouted out.
'Up here', came the cry of an obviously distressed woman.
'Sounds genuine', I thought.
So I bounded up two flights of stairs and into the bedroom, where I saw the wife performing pretty effective CPR on her dead husband.
She was crying.
I took over. Connecting the patient to my monitor/defibrillator I saw that the patient's cardiac rhythm was asystole - there is no activity in his heart at all.
Now came the tricky part. I was on my own, and there are a lot of things that I had to do very quickly.
I did 15 ch