The Kiss of Life

I got up at 6am on Thursday to give my nursing colleagues a tutorial on diabetes management and was greeted by this from my bedroom window.

Something quite astonishing just happened, for Holy Cross at least. I just performed my first “crash call” in casualty – a lady’s heart stopped beating right under my eyes. She was in cardiac arrest. What is more astounding though is that we managed to kick start her heart back into action again, with nothing more than some good cardiac massage (chest compressions) for one minute. More often than not a patient is found dead on the ward, in their chair or on the bench long before any hope of reperfusing their brain, with some very heroic allopathic medicine, would be considered. She really was in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, her prognosis is still poor – with no known medical history, she seems to have a multitude of problems – apart from her heart stopping for a moment, she appears to have had a massive haemorrhage in her brain (well, that’s my clinical judgement after a thorough examination and history – we have no CT scanner).

A cardiac arrest call was a very common event for me back home (UK). I actually thought I was rather competent at running them. However, being out of sync for so long definitely made me think harder about what I was doing with each step – I used to be so slick, or so I thought. I seem to wear very rose tinted glasses. I don’t think I can entirely blame myself though. The crash trolley looks a million dollars, but contains very few useful items – some broken bag valve masks (what we use to help a patient breath), a missing defibrillator (someone thought it looked better on the windowsill) and a lot of useless drugs. Fortunately, our lady didn’t require any of these items.

Running an arrest should be quite a smooth affair, and despite my complaints, I think we did quite well considering all five of my nurses don’t even have basic life support training. As I ran through the reversible causes I even managed to exclude a cardiac tamponade (fluid around the heart) with my new ultrasound scanning capabilities (did I mention I went on an ultrasound course?).

So, seeing as I have been elected (although, I recollect no election) to head the resuscitation committee, maybe we should start by getting everyone trained in basic life support and sort the crash trolleys out. However, I fear this is not really a key burning issue at Holy Cross – trying to get on top of the HIV epidemic is far needier and still a massive problem. When I started work on Monday morning I had already lost five young women, all about my age, as a result of HIV related illnesses. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation would probably have been futile in these scenarios. So, here’s one for you, boys and girls: STOP HAVING UNPROTECTED SEX. If you do, make sure you get “checked out” after.

A very spritely bunch of medical ward nurses at 6:30am, eager to learn about diabetes. I made a cake that I think everyone enjoyed, although probably didn’t really convey a good message when talking about the subject in hand. They are all keen for more sessions as they are a nerdy bunch and not just cake fiends.

My lady with Steven's-Johnson Syndrome - making long strides towards recovery.

An old lady with a nasty infection of her right eye - she delayed presentation for 3 months and as a result has probably lost her eyesight.

It was peas last week and now it is baby carrots. I completely forgot I was growing them. Delicious.



I have a rather large window in my sitting room - ideal for catching sunrise (above), sunset and lightening shows.