a futile rescue, a risky felony
You might be thinking, what on earth is she talking about? Her post title is sooo mysterious...
Well, good. That's my intent. If you're not thinking it, too late, because I'm about to elucidate.
And that rhymed. Unintentionally.
So flashback two years ago: I got ACLS certified for the first time. I blogged about it. Well, it became time to re-certify. And thus time to re-blog.
Except it's bigger, and definitely better.
I had heard re-certification is tougher than the initial one, because the instructors expect you to know the stuff already. So I had been reviewing, memorizing, and assessing my readiness for several weeks, and stayed up late the night before
[and I'll be honest. By "late" I mean 10:30 or 11pm. For me, after working two 12-hour shifts, that is as much as I can handle.]
making sure I knew those algorithms for ventricular tachycardia, asystole, bradycardia, and a bunch of other most-likely-Latin-based words.
So at 8:15 in the morning, I pulled into the parking lot near the building where my 8-hour simulation class would be. I walked across the parking lot in the moody weather (the wind was bitter, and the temperature was biting, and the fog was downcast), and then I saw it.
The sign.
It stated that the walkway from the parking lot to the building had been closed permanently as of last month.
I faced the 8-foot steel fence and became pensive.
I could walk about a quarter mile around, going back across the parking lot and along the street to the front entrance. It's not like I was late.
But,
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| This is from "Hyperbole and a Half" which is an awesome blog |
maybe I could just hop the fence.
I considered that I was wearing all black clothing, with a hood, and carrying a black bag, and that it would look pretty darn suspicious in that dreary morning.
But it would be so much easier.
So I waited til the police officer turned away, then hung my bag at the top of the fence, grabbed the top cross-rail, and climbed over. It was a bit tricky, because the bars were slick with dew, but I made it.
Is it trespassing if you are supposed to be in the building you are breaking into?
If anybody saw me, I guess they didn't care, because I kept my appointment with those mannequins.
My fellow healthcare providers and I practiced operating the defibrillator, inserting breathing tubes, and checking pulses on mannequins. I was particularly inept at finding or ruling out a pulse on the high-tech rubber dummies. Thankfully, anybody I will rescue is not a rubber dummy.
After lunch, we had MEGACODES. I think this is a word that the American Heart Association invented. I believe it refers to the experience of guiding the healthcare team through about 3 abnormal heart rhythms as we try to save the mannequin from death.
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| This picture is from here |
Then we had a written test, and as we gathered for the second run-through, I noted that we were 2 men [or women. thankfully, the gender-neutral mannequin was still there] down. That meant less people to play the roles of documenter, monitor operator, medication preparer, compressor, and airway-er for the necessarily-individual team leader. Our instructor told us we could skip the airway, and that the monitor guy could multi-task as medication person, but I quickly saw that the compressor would be left compressing for the duration of the MEGACODE, which is about 10 minutes. Which is a really long time to be pushing on the person's chest; that's why ACLS guidelines say to switch compressors every 2 minutes.
So as I was strangely left to be compressor AND airway AND medicator, I took to just tapping on the mannequin's chest, squeezing the bag mask in the general area of the mouth, and 'intubating' by just sticking the endotracheal tube on top of the face.
And when the team leader would ask about the quality of CPR, I reported that it was awesome.
Which was clearly the case, because we brought that mannequin back to...life.
post-script (or post-post): I know that trespassing is not a felony. I still don't recommend it
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