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 ...
A smirk that says it all.
It reminds me of a chilling conversation I had with two MIT doctoral students who were doing a residency at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. They firmly believed that, because they were scientists, they were more qualified to make health care/financial/whatever decisions for the “little people”.
The average troll, you see, the non scientifically inclined idiot were simply trogs who needed to listen to the smart people on matters of health, public policy, finance, etc. Strangely, I was a linguist and a creative, and I was still somewhat allowed in their inner circle until I finally decided enough was enough.
But honestly, this smirk is the same self-satisfied, self-worshiping smirk I saw on the faces of my MIT/WHOI buddies.
They HATE us ‘normies’. And yet, I am reminded of the brilliant episode of Frasier where Niles and Frasier become the delinquents in an auto-repair class they take at a local community college.
It’s a war, people.
I have made this comment before, but I’m going to do it again. I had a heart attack on December 26th, 2018. I called 911. When the ambulance got to me, I was in very bad shape. On the way to the hospital I went into cardiac arrest. They did CPR for 11 minutes and shocked me twice. I regained consciousness when the legs on the gurney did not extend and they dropped me while unloading me. I got the 100% blockage cleared and stent inserted. I recovered. I am not where I was before, but I have no obvious brain disfunction. I had no pain or injuries from the CPR.
It certainly is, and they didn't even waste any time obtaining "peer reviewed" research status before disseminating this agitprop. Lest we forget, this is from the same medical industry that actively persecuted any treatment for the recent SARS epidemic other than ventilators and ineffective yet astronomically priced pharmaceuticals.
If older Americans are foolish enough not to realize that they are being actively culled as part of government policy, they almost deserve to die without medical assistance. It's no surprise that the doctor in this article works for a socialized healthcare system. Getting older people to die is a cost-saving measure for corrupt regimes.
My dad trained lifeguards and utility workers in CPR, and many of his students got awards for SAVING lives.
Lots of lives.
My favorite movie CPR goof is the “slam the patient’s chest as hard as you can with your fist” moment.
This article makes sense if you do not value an individual life.
D’oh! My bad. A thousand apologies. I shall read it again.
On the morning of January 14th 2013 my pager went off as I was dressing for work, a neighbor was in the driveway where her husband collapsed. I ran down the road where she was trying to give CPR and immediately relieved her as the “first on the scene”. I kept up until I was relived by our first EMT showing up. I talked to the woman and she said she just wanted time to tell him how much he met the world to her. I returned with, “we are trying our best”.
CPR continued as he was transported to the hospital. Half way there he came back! My first CPR survivor!
He lasted two weeks (he had other life-threatening issues) and she had the chance to say what she wanted to him. What a feeling.
“I shall read it again.”
Of course, if I had a sudden heart attack out in the street tomorrow – while I’m fit and healthy – and a defibrillator was close by, then I would absolutely want someone to try it on me.
But that’s because I’d actually have a chance of recovering.
It worked on me. I still buy the nurse that did it on me, drinks whenever I see her.
I think your point is well taken. It can seem that when you see a couple threads that it would perhaps raise attention levels. However, what this article (although quite clumsy in the writing) is about is the import of having these discussions and understanding what individual wishes are prior to the presence of a crisis.
The amount of guilt I see everyday a family struggling with around end of life decisions is heart wrenching. Equally as awful is knowing we are torturing someone with little chance of meaningful recovery. So what it becomes to those of us on this side of things is to know what our patient actually would want.
One thing CoVId may have improved is the fact that patients absolutely should have advocates for them of they are unable to express a their wishes. But it can go really sideways when that advocacy becomes not what the patient wants, but rather what the advocate believes or wants.
The fact is that these are discussions that happen everyday both before CoVId and now in the post CoVId world. And the facts are the facts. Specifically;
1. Prompt, high quality CPR for a patient who suffers cardiac arrest provides the best chance for meaningful recovery
2. Most bystander CPR is not high quality
3. In hospital cardiac arrest has a much reduced meaningful recovery rate as a function of the arrest likely being end of life due to disease rather than the initial event.
4. It is important to accurately communicate your wishes as a patient as it pertains to resuscitation and select advocate who will speak for you accurately if you become unable to express yourself.
I see you cannot answer a simple question but deflect well. You are the one ironically employing the rule 13. Can you please tell me what I have said that is factually inaccurate about CPR and the article at hand.
I do not question everyone’s intelligence. Just yours. You never respond to direct questioning rather you use words you do not understand and deflect off topic statements. Like this one for example.
I see you cannot answer a simple question but deflect well.
There is good and bad in everything. It is proper application. Sometimes we don’t know for sure and have to take a chance.
Every person and every situation is unique.
Thank you for sharing your story! What I am sure you know that most people do not is that that physician had the ethical obligation to resuscitate you.
The reason is you consented to a treatment that had catastrophic risks but the benefits outweighed the risks. As physicians, if a patient consents to a treatment, we are obligated to treat all complications regardless of code status. For example, a patient who is DNR and consents to a surgical procedure will be resuscitated if a complication happens as a result of the surgery.
That ER doc did the exact right thing based on your consent to tPA I am so glad you consented and that the doc knew his duty despite the advice of the nurse.
Stay well!
Does this woman know how many stroke/ischemia patients with normal hearts, code during the stroke, only to be revived by CPR, and subsequently the stroke patient fully recovers or at least is restored to a high quality of life?
Sounds like a snowflake doctor needs a new career.
What a moron.
I’ve done CPR thousands of times.
If the patient is pulseless you don’t defibrillate them.
Placing the leads on can be done by going up or down their shirt and not removing it in front of family members.
Ya know in trauma, we do what we call a “cut down”……….severe trauma requires all clothing removed so we can see extent of injuries or injuries we can’t see with clothes on.
Perhaps this Doctor wants to forgo treating car accident patients too.
Down time matters.
But yeah, it doesn’t work more often than it does.
Really depends on what the reason for CPR, and if it’s cardiac, where did the heart damage occur.
There really is a Left Side Artery widow maker……..
Buh-bye, you freaky blue-haired bitch.
![]() | "More recently, I've had to face up to my own potential death, after being diagnosed with breast cancer twice – for the first time in 2015, when I was 40, and then again three years later." |
Younger kid has saved multiple lives with CPR, both as an EMT in an ambulance and as a nurse.
But yeah, there are times when it gets ugly.
But if the patient wants all treatments and procedures done to keep them alive…….it really cost nothing but a few minutes to try.
So why not?
The longest I ever worked a patient was 40 minutes. About 10 of those minutes were in the Ambulance while on the way to the hospital.
30 minutes in the recuss room at Detroit Receiving Hospital.
Got him back once, but he died and didn’t come back again.
I was going to get paid whether I was standing around picking my nose or performing compressions or bagging him.
So why not?
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