A second chance at life…..

It’s amazing the impact that one person can have on another. As a paramedic, you work with a partner and sit inside of an ambulance waiting for your unit to be given as assignment. Once given, you turn on the lights, flip the siren and proceed into the unknown. The dispatcher give you a brief description of what may be going on, but 99% of the time, it’s totally different. It’s that 1% that makes me realize how much I love helping people and want to become a physician.

My partner and I were given the call for a cardiac arrest in the subway station. Honestly, when we see something like that, most of the time the patient isn’t in distress at all. The patient is usually sleeping or intoxicated. When we arrived, the patient was not only having CPR done to her, but she was traveling with her 3 year old son at the time. My patient was a 33 year old woman. Just looking at her, you would never assume that she would have a massive MI (Myocardial Infarction). The police and firefighters were busy with crowd control and my partner and I started our intervention.

Any time you work up a cardiac arrest its an emotional experience. What makes it even harder is when the patient is so young. This woman was dead and we are given the task of trying to bring her back to life. With CPR continuously being done, we secure her airway via intubation. Because of the fluid loss, her vasculature was poor. So we had to drill a hole into bone using an intraosseous needle. This allowed us to give her medication and replace the fluids she lost. After about 15 minutes, we noticed that her heart went into v-fib (ventricular fibrillation), so we defibrillated her. This happened about 4 times. Finally her heart stabilized to the point where we were able to safely carry her out of the subway.

We notified the hospital and the ER staff was waiting for us. Drenched in sweat and high off of adrenaline, me and my partner were hopeful that she would make. Walking back to the crew room, I saw the patient’s son and he asked me if his mom would be okay. All I could say is that your mom is a very strong woman and she would so proud of how brave you are. He smiled. 🙂

This happened a few months ago. And now, I’ve received an invitation to a “Second Chance Brunch”. This woman not only survived, but she has suffered no deficit. Aside from having a pacemaker/defibrillator placed, she 100% okay.

I am so grateful for experiences like this one. As a medic, I’m with the patient at the beginning of the story, but as a doctor, I’ll get to see the patient all the way to the end. I want to be able to complete the story. Life is so precious, and being able to help people is such a gift. Doctors are definitely servant-leaders, and that’s what we aspire too be.