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CPR, not sure how it worked out.
Big Sky Redneck
Member Posts: 19,752 ✭✭✭
This morning I was in a truckstop getting coffee, place had a bus load of Chinese tourists and was pretty busy. I'm standing there at the coffee station trying to look pissed so nobody would talk to me when a lady walked in asking a clerk for help with a man who fell. Didn't pay much attention to this because I'm sure if someone fell last thing he wants is a crowd.
Just as I was ready to go to the cash register the lady came back in and calmly asked if anyone knew CPR. I stood there for a second lookin around to see if anyone went out, nobody did. I sat the coffee down and walked out the door and saw a group all huddled up looking at someone laying down, there was another tourist performing CPR. I started to walk away, again not wanting to get in the way when I noticed the lady doing chest compressions not doing it correctly, she was barely pushing on his chest.
It took me a couple seconds to register this, my mind racing back to Iraq where I had to take CPR classes when my legs moved me into the crowd. I knelt down and tapped th lady on th shoulder and motioned her off, did a couple quick checks for clear airway, signs of breathing and a feel for a pulse, nothing. Clamped my hands and started compressions, while doing these my mind was going over the count trying to remember if breaths were still reccomended. By now the store manager was behind me on th phone with 911, I heard him confirming my steps, 2" compressions and counting out. He told me keep compressions, no breaths.
I kept this up, how long I don't know, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said if I was tired they would take over but I was concentrating on the down person. I remember seeing his face, almost smiling and eyes part way open, all I could do was count along with the manager 1 2 3 4 . Heard the sirens coming up the driveway, I told myself keep going untill the paramedics move me off, after a minute I saw the medic bag go beside me and the tap on the shoulder, I Clear and moved off.
I was winded, stood there for a moment and watched the paramedics go to work, a couple people walked over and told me thank you, all I could do was nod. I went in and got my coffee, paid for it and walked back out. They are still doing CPR, my heart sank. I left before anything was said, I don't know if they revived him or not.
This has been bugging me all morning, all I can remember is his face, he looked peacefull.
No, I did not do anything special and I'm not posting this for "atta boys", just getting this off my chest and hoping it quits bugging me. I called GB member Idahobound and asked if he could check the newspaper tomorrow and let me know if there is any mention, I want to hear that he is OK but deep down I don't think he is. He was an older man, 60s or 70s, I think he went peacefully, I just pray and hope I'm wrong and he is in the hospital laughing about the tattooed ugly dude giving him CPR.
Just as I was ready to go to the cash register the lady came back in and calmly asked if anyone knew CPR. I stood there for a second lookin around to see if anyone went out, nobody did. I sat the coffee down and walked out the door and saw a group all huddled up looking at someone laying down, there was another tourist performing CPR. I started to walk away, again not wanting to get in the way when I noticed the lady doing chest compressions not doing it correctly, she was barely pushing on his chest.
It took me a couple seconds to register this, my mind racing back to Iraq where I had to take CPR classes when my legs moved me into the crowd. I knelt down and tapped th lady on th shoulder and motioned her off, did a couple quick checks for clear airway, signs of breathing and a feel for a pulse, nothing. Clamped my hands and started compressions, while doing these my mind was going over the count trying to remember if breaths were still reccomended. By now the store manager was behind me on th phone with 911, I heard him confirming my steps, 2" compressions and counting out. He told me keep compressions, no breaths.
I kept this up, how long I don't know, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said if I was tired they would take over but I was concentrating on the down person. I remember seeing his face, almost smiling and eyes part way open, all I could do was count along with the manager 1 2 3 4 . Heard the sirens coming up the driveway, I told myself keep going untill the paramedics move me off, after a minute I saw the medic bag go beside me and the tap on the shoulder, I Clear and moved off.
I was winded, stood there for a moment and watched the paramedics go to work, a couple people walked over and told me thank you, all I could do was nod. I went in and got my coffee, paid for it and walked back out. They are still doing CPR, my heart sank. I left before anything was said, I don't know if they revived him or not.
This has been bugging me all morning, all I can remember is his face, he looked peacefull.
No, I did not do anything special and I'm not posting this for "atta boys", just getting this off my chest and hoping it quits bugging me. I called GB member Idahobound and asked if he could check the newspaper tomorrow and let me know if there is any mention, I want to hear that he is OK but deep down I don't think he is. He was an older man, 60s or 70s, I think he went peacefully, I just pray and hope I'm wrong and he is in the hospital laughing about the tattooed ugly dude giving him CPR.
Comments
On an adult, CPR must be administered with enough force to break ribs to be effective 8 out of 10 times.
Scary crap to be sure but if the lungs are not being compressed, your just not doing it right. Seniors bones are brittle and flex little if any without breaking.
In this day and age fewer and fewer people would have done what you did.
You sir can stand tall knowing you did your very best for another human being.
CPR rarely, if ever, works.
If CPR is started within 3-5 minutes, & ALS within 8-10 minutes, survival goes up dramatically. The most likely to completely recover, in my experience, are victims of electrocution.
Neal
We do what we can, the rest is up to God.
Without a CPR mask you NEVER give breaths, unless you know the person(ie close friend or relative or very small child/infant) and that is still a risk. We have had a couple folks recently that survived because of CPR, but the three times in my career that I have had to do CPR all three had massive heart attacks and were DRT.
We do what we can, the rest is up to God.
That!! Can't be said better,,
If he was in fact in cardiac arrest, he probably will be listed in the obituaries.
CPR rarely, if ever, works.
Even if the "statistics" prove CPR rarely does any good, there is always the chance it may save a life. Especially true with drowning victims. When medical care is 8 to 15 minutes away {if you're lucky},
I would want anyone to do anything to try to keep me alive.
Your view about CPR may change some day, if you are the one laying on your back, with your eyes rolled into the back of your head.
Or do you have DNR tattooed on your forehead?????
Good going Big Sky Redneck.[8D]
quote:Originally posted by allen griggs
If he was in fact in cardiac arrest, he probably will be listed in the obituaries.
CPR rarely, if ever, works.
Even if the "statistics" prove CPR rarely does any good, there is always the chance it may save a life. Especially true with drowning victims. When medical care is 8 to 15 minutes away {if you're lucky},
I would want anyone to do anything to try to keep me alive.
Your view about CPR may change some day, if you are the one laying on your back, with your eyes rolled into the back of your head.
Or do you have DNR tattooed on your forehead?????
Good going Big Sky Redneck.[8D]
Usually when CPR is performed, it is little more than desecration of a corpse. I have done CPR on many hundreds of patients and very few ever lived to walk out of the hospital. I am talking about, one or two out of a hundred. Y'all listen to the "Rah Rah" stuff coming out of the Red Cross and you think you are going to really do some good with CPR, we experienced medics regarded CPR as a hoax perpetrated upon the American people.
Sure, many were listed by the Red Cross as "CPR saves." A pulse was restored, and the patient lived, on a ventilator in ICU for a week and ran up a $200 K hospital bill, then, mercifully, they died.
I do not want CPR performed on me under any circumstances and it forcefully says so in my living will.
Yes, CPR might work in a drowning, particularly of a young person, or in an electrocution of a younger person, and in those two cases I would perform it, otherwise, I would take a hike and let someone else play hero.
Now
I don't want him to do CPR, because I don't want to have to die more than once.
do not dwell on the out come regardless of how it ended when our number is up .
I must say that I would have hesitated on a stranger
Ros
You did good , you have heart
I was told by an EMT teaching the CPR class that maybe 1 in 20 who get CPR in the field recover.
You still try.
Too old to live...too young to die...
Don't they now teach not to do chest compressions, breathing only?
I was told by an EMT teaching the CPR class that maybe 1 in 20 who get CPR in the field recover.
You still try.
I thought it was the other way around, no breathing that the chest compressions move enough air.
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/CPRAndECC/HandsOnlyCPR/Hands-Only-CPR_UCM_440559_SubHomePage.jsp
However, both types are still taught:
http://depts.washington.edu/learncpr/index.html
When I was still an EMT we were taught compressions and bag-mask with supplemental oxygen until advanced care could arrive.
That is what can save the patient - Advanced Care. As in a defibrillator, drugs and oxygen. The value of CPR is if it can be performed well very rapidly after the heart stops and during a brief time until advanced care arrives. Odds are poor to begin with. If much time passes before beginning CPR or the arrival of advanced care, odds of survival are falling like a brick dropped from an airplane.
Still, we try because trying is all you can do. Most of the time that effort is simply a comfort to the bereaved family. That you tried means something to them.
Allen has been there a lot and offers some great first hand knowledge.
My mother had artifical respiration performed on her after floating bottom up in the seawater at Acuplco. My cousin saw her and stopped a Mexican man on the beach and pointed her out to him. He swam rather far out and then halued her back to the beach where he broke three of her ribs before she expelled the water in her lungs and came to. Miracles do happen. A wave caught her on the beach in a riptide area and that was the last she remembered.
The vast majority of the time it's needed the person either ends up not making it out of the ER or they wind up in ICU on life support waiting on the decision to unplug. However, there are those rare occasions the person is saved and goes on to live a normal life.
Morally speaking you should do anything within your power to save a life, but I don't recommend reflecting too much on those times things didn't work out well. I don't believe in ghosts, but they can sometimes set up camp in your head.
It is what it is.