Posted on 03/27/2022 5:39:55 AM PDT by KeyLargo
By LIZ O'RIORDAN FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 18:01 EDT, 26 March 2022 | UPDATED: 03:11 EDT, 27 March 2022
The first time I saw CPR being performed was on TV. I was in my teens – it was probably the American medical drama ER. Maybe it was Casualty.
There would always be a frantic scene of a medic pumping away at a patient whose heart had stopped.
Someone would rush in with defibrillator paddles. Someone else would yell 'CLEAR!'
Years later, as a fledgling doctor working on a crash team on hospital wards, I got to see it and do it for real – and it couldn't have been more different.
CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation as it's formally known, is brutal and undignified.
It's given when the heart stops – so in effect the patient has died – in the hope that it will bring them back to life. But it almost never works, because it is generally carried out on patients who are the sickest and the most frail in the hospital.
Their clothes are pulled off so the crash team can get paddles on their chest, and there are medical staff everywhere.
Some are feeling for a pulse, others are cleaning up blood and vomit. It is noisy. Someone is shouting out the number of chest compressions, doctors grunt as they press down. Rib fractures are incredibly common because of the force needed to start the heart – you can hear the bones break.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Seems like a poor financial strategy...
however, essentially, its true...
problem occurs when CPR is not discussed and settled EARLY on in an illness....
then we start CPR, do all this trauma to the patient, send them to ICU , black and blue and on a vent....
and then the horrible part for the family having to decide to have it all stopped....
one case I remember was a terminal patient, with cancer of the esophagus, who was going to go home/hospice to die, but did not have a clear "no code" order.....he had been spitting up some but when helping him get back into bed he started spitting up and then vomiting fresh blood every where...everywhere....code was called, they did all this stuff until we finally got hold of the family to make the "no code" order....
sadly this happens more than you think....
its best to get your desires in early when sick....
like most people, the perfect death would be to just slip away in your sleep....
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