I have worked in healthcare now for almost seventeen years. I started as a transporter, moving patients up and down for their exams. From there I went to the night shift, and covered the materials management department as well. So people moving, and digging for supplies the night shift nurses needed. After that, I went into the radiology department and worked as a CT technical assistant. More patient shuttling, but also paperwork and being around scanners.
All this before I was eighteen. At eighteen I was old enough to take the EMT course at Mesa Community College. So I did. After completing my exams, and my clinical, I worked another five years as an Emergency Room Technician while I worked my way through college.
The writing below was written after my clinical shadowing shift for my EMT. In the same ER I would eventually gain employ for half a decade. I was eighteen years old when I saw my first death, here is what I had to say about it...
----------------------------------------------------
It was gonna be a long night. It seemed kind of redundant for me to spend ten hours in an emergency room for my "clinical", when I already spend about thirty-two hours a week in one already. These types of grumbling thoughts passed slowly through my mind as I sped down the "sixty" and towards Banner Desert. I mean, I knew it was a little different style hospital then Banner Baywood, but in my mind an ER was an ER.
I get to the hospital and find a parking spot. Warily I make my way towards the entrance. I am comfortable in my hospital, because I know the routines, I know exactly how do deal with the patients, and mostly, I know all of my coworkers. No matter how much experience I have had in these places, a new one will still freak me out... If only a little... I walk in, and with my most pleasant face, and with as much charisma I can muster, I tell the first nurse I see who I am and what I am here for. Hoping desperately that this woman will take me by the hand and walk me to where I needed to be. Good decision! Point one for Benji already, and I was just walking in the door!
Apparently I asked the right woman, because she greeted me warmly, and took me right back to sign my name in their log book and get me shadowing one of their techs. This ER was quite a bit different then my own. With portable X-ray machines painted like dragons for the pediatric wing, and far more broken legs then heart attacks, I figured out quite quickly that this place was slightly out of my element. No biggie, I learned a few things.
I had many a sperm die while watching a doctor set an eight year old's broken wrist back in place. (they use an unguarded portable x-ray machine called a C-arm) Lots of bone-crunching fun there. I caught the back half of a doctor sewing a three year old's middle finger back on. That was nice, the doctor even reattached the finger nail for the kid. I helped put a leg splint on an elderly woman with a broken ankle.
And of course, the early portion of my night was spent walking around chatting it up with my ED tech, and the patients that they were putting IVs and Catheters into. I'm sure I earned lots of points during this time. I have lots of practice with talking to patients, and I know how to interact and help out the techs quite well. So, I wasted the first four or five hours just like that. Walking around, helping with mundane tasks, and talking to a lot of younger people then I was accustomed to.
Come three A.M. or so, the buzz begins. A code was coming in by ambulance, and they weren't far away. A fifteen year old girl had O.D.ed in a suicide attempt, and was seizing uncontrollable while in respiratory arrest (she wasn't breathing on her own any more). As I joined the crowd of people scurrying about the resuscitation room, preparing for the girl, and talking in high-end medical jargon, (that I, through many years of exposure, can interpret, but don't actually feel like explaining to you all right now. Your loss, ask me if you are interested in medical things, and actually have read this far down into the email), I resolved to observe, but stay out of the way the best I could. So, here she comes, storming thunder rolling up the hall, accompanied by a full crowd of paramedics. Her whole body in convulsing wildly, and I could already tell by her glazed over eyes that this was going to be bad.
We get her on the table, and the efficient staff goes right to work. Nurses, Doctors, ED techs, and myself, all moving in harmony to try and bring this child back to life. A middle aged Indian (not native American) doctor, with a thick, hard-to-understand accent, goes to work on inserting an airway. (which actually involves using a long metallic blade, to force open the jaw, and push the larynx down to where they can see it and insert the tube into the lungs) This isn't an easy task. The hardest part about it, children, are underdeveloped physically, and have a lot smalled holes then adults. The doctor actually missed three times, each time accidentally inserting it into the stomach, and each time putting a little more air into it with the two or three test breaths they used to see if it was the right spot.
That isn't unusual at all, since it is a very hard procedure to do. But, there is a sound, that no human can every naturally make, when that air comes burping up through the esophagus and past the laryngascope blade. I can't describe this sound at all, because comparing it to a belch would not do it justice, and would negate the horror I am trying to portray to you. This sound, I will hear in my nightmares, like the sound of hell itself breathing from this fifteen year old girls mouth. Anyways, while the doctor and respiratory technologists wrestled with that, I got recruited to help hold down on of the spasming arms, so that the nurse could start an IV. Now I am a strong young punk, but it wasn't easy for me to hold this fifteen year old girl down. I don't know if its because her mind wasn't holding back any of her strength, or if I just couldn't bring myself to the thought of bruising this little naked and defenseless baby. One way or another, she got it in, and just as they started pushing some of the medicines that they use, her seizures stop, mostly because of the paralyzing agents I suppose. And right about then, down goes the blood pressure, up comes the cardiac arrest.
In other words, even though she wasn't breathing at the start of it, her heart was still chunking away, albeit a little begrudgingly. Until they got the medications in at least. I don't know if it had anything to do with those meds, or if it was just a coincidence that the rest of her decided to let go right then, but at about the same time, her uncovered lower portion (they were constantly checking her femoral pulse, for all you health geeks out there) let loose. I don't know if any one of you will every know how pathetic and sad it is to see such a young woman, at just the start of her life, lie pissing herself all over the table, dieing, because she decided that she didn't want to live any more. Anyways, they eventually got a catheter in to fix that problem. (just to maybe educate you all a little bit more, a catheter, or "Foley cath" is a large bore tube, that is inserted into the urinary tube, which for everyone that isn't a girl, or hasn't taken physiology, is right in front of the vagina for women, and I am sure we all know where it is on guys...)
But now they aren't sure why this is happening, and as a flurry of drugs go into the patient, and more and more doctors show rush into the room, they decide to start CPR. I don't know if any of you have ever taken a CPR class, or ever seen it done. I do of course, suggest that EVERYONE should be CPR certified, and if you have a pool, and you don't have at least two people in your family that are, I personally think its freaking stupid. Anyways, so a large muscular male nurse starts pounding away on her chest. If you know anything about CPR, then you know that if you are doing it right, you are probably breaking ribs. Now, young people don't break as easily as any of the rest of us, because they are still flexible. And you would be surprised how far you can push the chest in before you hear anything snap.
So this nurse does it for a while, before someone asks me if I wan't to do it. Sure thing, I had never done it before, but it doesn't exactly take a nuclear medicine technologist to understand the physics of compressing the heart to force blood through your system. So I start in, and whether you have ever hiked with me or not, I am a boy scout, lots of stamina. I switched off a few times, but all in all I would say I did chest compression for about 30-40 minutes. They say chest compressions wear you out really fast, but I know I was probably on a huge adrenaline rush, so I never really did slow down. I earned some more points there too, I pushed at the right strength and speed, and they even printed out a monitor read of the rhythm I created... Ask me to show you some time, I would love to. So, an hour passes, this girl is not breathing on her own, and there is no pulse as far as any of us can feel.
All of the doctors stepped back, one by one, scratched their heads, until the pediatric specialist final broke the "semi-silence". "Anyone have any more ideas?" You could see each face deep in thought, hoping maybe for the breakthrough, the epiphany that would bring this fragile life back... I found myself wracking my brain, what did I know? Could I think of anything we hadn't tried? I, and everyone else, came up with nothing. "Anyone opposed to calling this?" The same doctor broke the silence again, after about a minute. No words... A head shake or two, and that was that. They told me to stop chest compressions. Now once you start doing something like that, and you know that your action is the only thing keeping that person is alive, it isn't an easy thing to stop.
If I could have formulated my thoughts into words right then, I would have spoken out. She was still "alive" right? What if we keep doing this? Maybe we can still save her! Maybe, just maybe, if I do one more chest compression, I will bring back a sinus rhythm, and she will recover. But I knew she wouldn't. So I slowly forced myself to stop, and to take my hands off of her lifeless chest. The crowd in the resuscitation room slowly filtered out, until all that was left was a few ED techs to clean up the mess we had made in our frenzy to save this child's life. And myself. I looked at her armband. I didn't want to forget her name. And even though I can't tell anyone her name, (about a bajillion privacy laws there) I will remember it for as long as I remember myself.
I watched the color fade out, and she slowly turned a medium shade of grey. After asking the techs in the room if they needed anything, they said no, and told me to go take a break, I must be pretty exhausted. I wasn't really, but I was a bit in shock. A million thoughts running through my mind, what could we have done different, could we have saved her? Why did she choose to die? What did she do it with? Why was that life wasted, how many lives like hers are lost every day to this kind of thing...
A kind ED tech took me out side, and told me to ask her any questions I may have had. So I asked about this and that, the medicines they pushed and whatnot. We went to grab something to eat, even though I wasn't feeling worn out yet, I was very hungry, must have burned a lot of calories. I came back, and went back to following around ED techs, and helping them out with mundane tasks. I put back on my smiley face, slapped some of my charisma around, and one way or another, recovered myself, and my state of mind.
Epilogue....
So, to follow it up, the girls mother finally shows up... The police had to go to her house, and practically knock the door down to find her. They found the house in shambles, with beer bottles everywhere... could this be what that little girl had escaped from? The mother got a ride with her sister into the hospital, and before she even would come in and ask about her daughter (the fate of whom she didn't yet know) she stopped outside for a cigarette. The sister sped off, very uncharacteristic of the normal close mexican familys... but then again, this didn't exactly look like a very close family, who am I to judge eh? The mother came in, was told the news, but shed no tears... Instead she was mildly irritated, and angry with the hospital. Threatening to sue, and telling the bearer of bad news that she was going to get "3 on your side" to come in and expose them all... It made me angry at that woman... I could tell the whole ER staff thought the same way... It is really was sad to have people say that the little girl was probably better off...
One way or another, that was my night. My serious story. Take it or leave it I suppose... I have a very multifaceted personality, and I just showed you all another side of me that most of you won't normally see. And while I can guarantee that almost none of you will ever see all of me, I think it may or may not be a good idea for me to open my heart up a little, and see how people react. I want each and every one of you to respond one way or another. And I want each and every one of you to forward this to someone you think might appreciate it. So, I'll end here, and just say please write me a response back.
----------------------------------------------------
As always, reading the voice of eighteen year old Ben makes me cringe. I did edit this a bit for spelling and readability, but have left the content intact. He was an ass, and talked in a cocky tone. But this event did shape me. I still have that readout of those compression's to this day...
All this before I was eighteen. At eighteen I was old enough to take the EMT course at Mesa Community College. So I did. After completing my exams, and my clinical, I worked another five years as an Emergency Room Technician while I worked my way through college.
The writing below was written after my clinical shadowing shift for my EMT. In the same ER I would eventually gain employ for half a decade. I was eighteen years old when I saw my first death, here is what I had to say about it...
----------------------------------------------------
It was gonna be a long night. It seemed kind of redundant for me to spend ten hours in an emergency room for my "clinical", when I already spend about thirty-two hours a week in one already. These types of grumbling thoughts passed slowly through my mind as I sped down the "sixty" and towards Banner Desert. I mean, I knew it was a little different style hospital then Banner Baywood, but in my mind an ER was an ER.
I get to the hospital and find a parking spot. Warily I make my way towards the entrance. I am comfortable in my hospital, because I know the routines, I know exactly how do deal with the patients, and mostly, I know all of my coworkers. No matter how much experience I have had in these places, a new one will still freak me out... If only a little... I walk in, and with my most pleasant face, and with as much charisma I can muster, I tell the first nurse I see who I am and what I am here for. Hoping desperately that this woman will take me by the hand and walk me to where I needed to be. Good decision! Point one for Benji already, and I was just walking in the door!
Apparently I asked the right woman, because she greeted me warmly, and took me right back to sign my name in their log book and get me shadowing one of their techs. This ER was quite a bit different then my own. With portable X-ray machines painted like dragons for the pediatric wing, and far more broken legs then heart attacks, I figured out quite quickly that this place was slightly out of my element. No biggie, I learned a few things.
I had many a sperm die while watching a doctor set an eight year old's broken wrist back in place. (they use an unguarded portable x-ray machine called a C-arm) Lots of bone-crunching fun there. I caught the back half of a doctor sewing a three year old's middle finger back on. That was nice, the doctor even reattached the finger nail for the kid. I helped put a leg splint on an elderly woman with a broken ankle.
And of course, the early portion of my night was spent walking around chatting it up with my ED tech, and the patients that they were putting IVs and Catheters into. I'm sure I earned lots of points during this time. I have lots of practice with talking to patients, and I know how to interact and help out the techs quite well. So, I wasted the first four or five hours just like that. Walking around, helping with mundane tasks, and talking to a lot of younger people then I was accustomed to.
Come three A.M. or so, the buzz begins. A code was coming in by ambulance, and they weren't far away. A fifteen year old girl had O.D.ed in a suicide attempt, and was seizing uncontrollable while in respiratory arrest (she wasn't breathing on her own any more). As I joined the crowd of people scurrying about the resuscitation room, preparing for the girl, and talking in high-end medical jargon, (that I, through many years of exposure, can interpret, but don't actually feel like explaining to you all right now. Your loss, ask me if you are interested in medical things, and actually have read this far down into the email), I resolved to observe, but stay out of the way the best I could. So, here she comes, storming thunder rolling up the hall, accompanied by a full crowd of paramedics. Her whole body in convulsing wildly, and I could already tell by her glazed over eyes that this was going to be bad.
We get her on the table, and the efficient staff goes right to work. Nurses, Doctors, ED techs, and myself, all moving in harmony to try and bring this child back to life. A middle aged Indian (not native American) doctor, with a thick, hard-to-understand accent, goes to work on inserting an airway. (which actually involves using a long metallic blade, to force open the jaw, and push the larynx down to where they can see it and insert the tube into the lungs) This isn't an easy task. The hardest part about it, children, are underdeveloped physically, and have a lot smalled holes then adults. The doctor actually missed three times, each time accidentally inserting it into the stomach, and each time putting a little more air into it with the two or three test breaths they used to see if it was the right spot.
That isn't unusual at all, since it is a very hard procedure to do. But, there is a sound, that no human can every naturally make, when that air comes burping up through the esophagus and past the laryngascope blade. I can't describe this sound at all, because comparing it to a belch would not do it justice, and would negate the horror I am trying to portray to you. This sound, I will hear in my nightmares, like the sound of hell itself breathing from this fifteen year old girls mouth. Anyways, while the doctor and respiratory technologists wrestled with that, I got recruited to help hold down on of the spasming arms, so that the nurse could start an IV. Now I am a strong young punk, but it wasn't easy for me to hold this fifteen year old girl down. I don't know if its because her mind wasn't holding back any of her strength, or if I just couldn't bring myself to the thought of bruising this little naked and defenseless baby. One way or another, she got it in, and just as they started pushing some of the medicines that they use, her seizures stop, mostly because of the paralyzing agents I suppose. And right about then, down goes the blood pressure, up comes the cardiac arrest.
In other words, even though she wasn't breathing at the start of it, her heart was still chunking away, albeit a little begrudgingly. Until they got the medications in at least. I don't know if it had anything to do with those meds, or if it was just a coincidence that the rest of her decided to let go right then, but at about the same time, her uncovered lower portion (they were constantly checking her femoral pulse, for all you health geeks out there) let loose. I don't know if any one of you will every know how pathetic and sad it is to see such a young woman, at just the start of her life, lie pissing herself all over the table, dieing, because she decided that she didn't want to live any more. Anyways, they eventually got a catheter in to fix that problem. (just to maybe educate you all a little bit more, a catheter, or "Foley cath" is a large bore tube, that is inserted into the urinary tube, which for everyone that isn't a girl, or hasn't taken physiology, is right in front of the vagina for women, and I am sure we all know where it is on guys...)
But now they aren't sure why this is happening, and as a flurry of drugs go into the patient, and more and more doctors show rush into the room, they decide to start CPR. I don't know if any of you have ever taken a CPR class, or ever seen it done. I do of course, suggest that EVERYONE should be CPR certified, and if you have a pool, and you don't have at least two people in your family that are, I personally think its freaking stupid. Anyways, so a large muscular male nurse starts pounding away on her chest. If you know anything about CPR, then you know that if you are doing it right, you are probably breaking ribs. Now, young people don't break as easily as any of the rest of us, because they are still flexible. And you would be surprised how far you can push the chest in before you hear anything snap.
So this nurse does it for a while, before someone asks me if I wan't to do it. Sure thing, I had never done it before, but it doesn't exactly take a nuclear medicine technologist to understand the physics of compressing the heart to force blood through your system. So I start in, and whether you have ever hiked with me or not, I am a boy scout, lots of stamina. I switched off a few times, but all in all I would say I did chest compression for about 30-40 minutes. They say chest compressions wear you out really fast, but I know I was probably on a huge adrenaline rush, so I never really did slow down. I earned some more points there too, I pushed at the right strength and speed, and they even printed out a monitor read of the rhythm I created... Ask me to show you some time, I would love to. So, an hour passes, this girl is not breathing on her own, and there is no pulse as far as any of us can feel.
All of the doctors stepped back, one by one, scratched their heads, until the pediatric specialist final broke the "semi-silence". "Anyone have any more ideas?" You could see each face deep in thought, hoping maybe for the breakthrough, the epiphany that would bring this fragile life back... I found myself wracking my brain, what did I know? Could I think of anything we hadn't tried? I, and everyone else, came up with nothing. "Anyone opposed to calling this?" The same doctor broke the silence again, after about a minute. No words... A head shake or two, and that was that. They told me to stop chest compressions. Now once you start doing something like that, and you know that your action is the only thing keeping that person is alive, it isn't an easy thing to stop.
If I could have formulated my thoughts into words right then, I would have spoken out. She was still "alive" right? What if we keep doing this? Maybe we can still save her! Maybe, just maybe, if I do one more chest compression, I will bring back a sinus rhythm, and she will recover. But I knew she wouldn't. So I slowly forced myself to stop, and to take my hands off of her lifeless chest. The crowd in the resuscitation room slowly filtered out, until all that was left was a few ED techs to clean up the mess we had made in our frenzy to save this child's life. And myself. I looked at her armband. I didn't want to forget her name. And even though I can't tell anyone her name, (about a bajillion privacy laws there) I will remember it for as long as I remember myself.
I watched the color fade out, and she slowly turned a medium shade of grey. After asking the techs in the room if they needed anything, they said no, and told me to go take a break, I must be pretty exhausted. I wasn't really, but I was a bit in shock. A million thoughts running through my mind, what could we have done different, could we have saved her? Why did she choose to die? What did she do it with? Why was that life wasted, how many lives like hers are lost every day to this kind of thing...
A kind ED tech took me out side, and told me to ask her any questions I may have had. So I asked about this and that, the medicines they pushed and whatnot. We went to grab something to eat, even though I wasn't feeling worn out yet, I was very hungry, must have burned a lot of calories. I came back, and went back to following around ED techs, and helping them out with mundane tasks. I put back on my smiley face, slapped some of my charisma around, and one way or another, recovered myself, and my state of mind.
Epilogue....
So, to follow it up, the girls mother finally shows up... The police had to go to her house, and practically knock the door down to find her. They found the house in shambles, with beer bottles everywhere... could this be what that little girl had escaped from? The mother got a ride with her sister into the hospital, and before she even would come in and ask about her daughter (the fate of whom she didn't yet know) she stopped outside for a cigarette. The sister sped off, very uncharacteristic of the normal close mexican familys... but then again, this didn't exactly look like a very close family, who am I to judge eh? The mother came in, was told the news, but shed no tears... Instead she was mildly irritated, and angry with the hospital. Threatening to sue, and telling the bearer of bad news that she was going to get "3 on your side" to come in and expose them all... It made me angry at that woman... I could tell the whole ER staff thought the same way... It is really was sad to have people say that the little girl was probably better off...
One way or another, that was my night. My serious story. Take it or leave it I suppose... I have a very multifaceted personality, and I just showed you all another side of me that most of you won't normally see. And while I can guarantee that almost none of you will ever see all of me, I think it may or may not be a good idea for me to open my heart up a little, and see how people react. I want each and every one of you to respond one way or another. And I want each and every one of you to forward this to someone you think might appreciate it. So, I'll end here, and just say please write me a response back.
----------------------------------------------------
As always, reading the voice of eighteen year old Ben makes me cringe. I did edit this a bit for spelling and readability, but have left the content intact. He was an ass, and talked in a cocky tone. But this event did shape me. I still have that readout of those compression's to this day...
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