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Iʋσɾყ Aρɾιʅ 4ƚԋ Mαɳԋαƚƚαɳ, NY
With slightly trembling hands, I managed to slip on fitted gloves over my slender fingers and wrist, my eyes staying focused on my patient who laid there attempting to hold on to life. I allowed myself to tune out the bleating alarms of the Code Blue speakers, as it alerted the entire hospital of where the emergency was located.
Adrenaline coursing through my veins, I quickly sprang into action, trying to keep myself calm throughout this. Although I knew the drill all too well as I rushed to perform resuscitation, my mind replayed the countless hours of CPR training. Every compression, every breath had to be precise or else this woman wouldn't make it.
125 pound, sixty-two year old Mrs. Young was the patient, she'd been dealing with heart and respiratory problems for almost over a year now and was a frequent patient, always receiving checkups in order to keep her health straight. She had never had a scare like this before, where she just stopped breathing no one else could tell but it worried me. My eyes stung with tears that threatened to fall but my mind never faltered from the task at hand.
Kicking the pedal on the patient's bed, it instantly dropped, allowing her to be prone to the bed in order to prepare her for the CPR to try to resuscitate her failing heart. Mrs. Young, lay lifeless on the gurney as me and the team prepared ourselves. My heart raced as I positioned myself at the head of the bed, watching her, her face pale, and her chest unmoving.
Calling out the name and amount of the drug I was pushing into the woman's I.V. I knew another one of my co-workers was carefully recording everything being done, as her family huddled together in the corner outside the room, in a moment of panicked uncertainty. Yet they all stared directly at me with those hopeful teary eyes. I knew that in this instance, I was their hero, and I couldn't let them down. I focused on the instructions being barked out by the Intensive Care Specialist Dr. Anderson.
"Clear!" he shouted, and a jolt of electricity coursed through Mrs. Young's body as the defibrillator paddles were applied. Her body very abruptly arched off the bed, but her heart remained stubbornly silent.
I watched carefully as the monitor displayed a flatline meaning now there was certainly no time to waste. I leaned over Mrs. Young's motionless form and began the rhythmic chest compressions. "One, two, three, four," I counted to myself, pushing hard and fast on her chest, striving for the necessary depth and rate needed to get her heart pumping again
As she I worked tirelessly to revive this woman, the room seemed to blur around me. The only thing that mattered right now was the steady beat of the compressions and the occasional instruction from Dr. Anderson. "Ventilate," he ordered, and a respiratory therapist squeezed the bag, delivering precious breaths to Mrs. Young's oxygen-starved lungs.
