So, I just gave CPR to a dead guy. How's your night been so far?

The BBQ Pit
1

Not a rant here, just didn’t know where to put this.

Because the jeep is still in the shop, I decided to walk 5 blocks to the Chevron to get some beer and assorted munchies before the Fiesta Bowl. Coming out, a guy yelled at me “Hey! You know CPR?”. Someone had just driven up with an unconscious man in their back seat who they had seen collapse on the side of 10th Street about two minutes before. I jogged over, made sure someone was on the phone to 911 and checked on the guy in the back seat. Not breathing; no pulse. Another bystander and I pulled him out and laid him on the ground of the Chevron parking lot.

Reaching back into my lifeguard days in highschool, I gave it a shot. The guy was pretty fat, and my fingers were cold, so I put my ear against his chest to make sure compressions were necessary. Still no pulse. I got through two 2/15 cycles before the ambulance pulled up and the EMTs took over. Unfortunately they were also unable to revive him and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The funny thing is, and I guess this is why I’m posting, is that I find it a bit odd that I don’t feel anything about what happened. Nothing. I don’t even think my heart rate sped up through the whole episode. It had the emotional impact on me as when a homeless guy asks me for a quarter, i.e. very little. I wonder if I have grown so callous that a guy dies on me and I am more concerned with washing the taste of his breath out of mouth, the stink of his sweat off the side of my head, and cheering on Ohio State than I am about the guy who died and who he was or if he has any family.

I don’t feel much about this aspect either. I don’t feel guilt for not caring, and I don’t feel pride for helping when others looked away. Again, it feels much the same as giving a guy a quarter. But he died. It’s odd that mortality has come to mean so little to me.

2

You could be just in shock. Sometimes a person is like an unfeeling machine in such a state, IIRC.

3

Good job, you know. You had to do it. Seems like you’re distancing yourself in a healthy way from an experience which you now have no control over.

I once helped a guy who was so badly mangled the fire department was saying he had no chance. I got home, took a bath, and discovered I couldn’t put my hands in the water to wash off his blood. I was thinking: that’s all that’s left of him.

Just let your mind recuperate the way it wants to. What you did was worth doing.

4

…I don’t think its shock, sometimes things really don’t matter that much.

I remember driving my staff home after a long shift at work-it was about three in the morning. As we came around the corner-we came across a traffic accident. Needless to say, it was the last thing I needed that night-I’d been working since 8 that morning and just wanted to go home to sleep. I seriously considered just driving by-the street was by then full of people streaming to help-but something wouldn’t let me go past…

I parked my car with the hazard lights on so any cars coming by wouldn’t drive right into the accident site, then me and the restaurant supervisor went to see what we could do to help. There didn’t seem to be any immediate danger-but the “people that were helping” were dragging the female driver out of the car. We politely (in our very, tired, managerial tones) said that that wasn’t the best of ideas, and then proceeded to tender first aid to the (sadly intoxicated) young lady in the car until the ambulance arrived…

The thing was, dispite the tragedy of it all, the thoughts running my head were the most bizarre of things-I need sleep, it’s a busy functions day tomorrow, I haven’t put my shoes on properly, I really need deoderant now…and when the ambulance arrived, we gave them a quick rundown on the patient and asked can we go now?

That happened nearly a year and a half ago, and I still feel nothing about it. If a fatality had been involved? Probably would have felt the same. I don’t believe your feeling’s are wrong or anything like that-society at the moment considers the grief response is the correct response in most situations-feel proud of what you have done, and don’t worry about your lack of emotional impact…I don’t think that it will come back to bite you later and I think that on the Karmic scales you are in the positive… :wink:

(suffice to say, one of my favourite movies is Accidental Hero, starring Dustin Hoffman…)

5

Better than doing nothing. My girlfriend (a med student) once encountered a lady on the street who was in obvious need of aid. She didn’t start CPR, however, because the lady appeared to be breathing. She stoped and died the second the EMTs hit the scene, and was never revived.

My girlfriend found out later that what she had seen was actually agonal breathing: which isn’t really breathing at all: just a reflexive gasping that the body often does when its been without oxygen (for future reference, in case anyone is in this situation: it looks a lot like a fish gasping when its out of water: not really drawing any air), the heart is quitting and the body is just about to call it quits. She should have started rescue breaths and CPR (if there was no pulse). She didn’t have any reason to know this yet, but it’s always haunted her: she feels pretty much that she killed her first patient.

Being an EMT, we were taught that the reality is that CPR on a full code (not just needing rescue breaths, but actually a lack of pulse) doesn’t ultimately help in more than 75% of the cases: you just can’t move enough blood to really sustain the brain and body, and without defib, the heart will rarely restart or go out of fib just from being thrashed.

CPR is a lot more grusome than TV makes it out to be, and I don’t just mean vomit (I’d seriously encourage people to carry valved face sheilds around in their wallet by the way). The situation is pretty much so desperate that almost anything you do to the body is pretty much beside the point: in many of the eldery cases you end up breaking some or all the ribs, but it just doesn’t matter, because for all the internal horrible damage that can do, it just doesn’t compare to how bad a stopped heart is. Even if you don’t know how to do CPR, something is usually better than nothing: the person is not going to stop being dead just because you hold back.

Bottom line: don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work, and don’t beat yourself up about it. But do it anyway.

6

Well, I’m proud of you.

I’d say there’s a good chance you’re in shock. And since he wasn’t anyone you knew, or you weren’t around and involved when some huge, tragic, scary (I’m not saying what happened isn’t any of those things, I’m just saying it wasn’t as dramatic as being trapped in a burning building or anything…aw, you all know what I mean, right?) I wouldn’t be surprised if you dealt with it subconsciously so that when the shock finally wears off you’ve already finished dealing and barely notice.

I am not a prof of course.

7

You know, some people can compartmentalize their feelings and some can’t. I react the same way you do in an emergency. I become completely detached from my emotions and concentrate on the issue. I ignore the blood, the vomit, the ickiness of the situation.

Some people become paralyzed by their emotions in an emergency. You do not. That’s a good thing.

8

OK, first off, How 'bout them Buckeyes! (mainly because I hate Miami)

Second, I appreciate the concern, but I am not in shock. I don’t need to “deal” with anything. The whole point was that I found it odd that it affected me so little. I think that we may expect things to affect us. When a death didn’t, it didn’t jibe with all the things overwrought dramas told me I should be feeling. But I guess that’s why I consider them overwrought.

It was just an odd thing to happen to me tonight, and the first time I ever used CPR on a human. That is what my post was about. I ran across something I felt needed to be done, I did, and I started a thread about it. I was even trying to allay the inevitable “hang in there, you can deal with it” when I remarked on my heart rate. There was absolutely no stress on my end. Again, I’m fine.

I always knew I was calm in crisis situations, but I was mildly suprised when I found myself not only calm, but not caring in the face of another man’s death. Of course, I helped anyway. However, it was more my honor than my love for my fellow man that made me try. I said I jogged over to him, but in truth, I walked.

I don’t need or want consolation or support here. What I’d rather is this to turn in to a sharing of experiences similar to what happened to me tonight and a discussion of how people view the deaths of strangers.

9

I’ve taken CPR classes and have been told repeatedly that should I ever actually have to use my skills, it will be unpleasant and traumatic. And as Apos pointed out, my efforts will most likely be unsuccessful.
Beeblebrox, I hope that your coolness is permanent, but since it is such an atypical reaction, it’s logical for us to worry that you may be in shock and that your feeling may hit big time later. Kudos on your bravery, compassion and responsibility. I hope that I will be as brave and cool if the situation ever arises.

Note: as mentioned by Banquet Bear, injured people should not be moved by amateurs except to remove them from a life-threatening situation.

10

It’s shock. But sometimes you never get over it. Seek professional help if you need to. No shame in that.

As for my day, it is a little better knowing you are a good person.

11

Maybe you’re in shock, maybe you just don’t have to be moved by every potenially moving experience you run across. Whatever, you’ll probably figure it out. I assume that you’ve done ok so far in life.

Like Apos said, you had crappy odds for success; being an ex-lifeguard, you might have already known that. Good for you for trying all the same.

12

I’ve been in two “crisis” situations.

The first was when a little toddler, who was just learning to walk and run had managed to get well ahead of his parents who were dealing with their other three kids. He barreled out into three lanes of quick on-coming traffic. The first-lane car was the only one who actually saw him (his head wasn’t even as high as the hood of the car.)

The car tapped it’s horn lightly, I looked up, and thought “oh, I suppose I’m the closest…” I jumped into the street, just managed to snag his sleeve at the shoulder as he got into the second lane. I turned my back to the second-lane car and drew the kid across the front of my body (thinking that it may be futile but since we were quite likely to be hit, I would be some cushioning between the kid and the bumper). The third-lane car, oblivious to all, rushed by at about 40 miles an hour, its wake tugged at my jacket. The second-lane car hit its brakes (it had seen me, not the kid) and as it skidded towards us I calmly walked back to the curb, dragging the kid beside me. We were both almost hit – missed us by mere inches.

The parents were blanched, I thought the dad would faint. The first-lane driver looked like he was about to puke. The second-lane driver recovered quickly and continued on looking spooked (possibly in a slight state of shock – it had been a very close one!). Everyone, including bystanders, looked terrfied and were all frozen in place for a few solid seconds.

I felt… well, kinda bored.

A few days later I thought “wow, I almost saw a baby get squashed” but overall and until this day, I was totally disaffected and have no emotion about it whatsoever.

I’m guessing it has something to do with my brain shutting off and going into “automatic pilot.” I was like a robot and I remember each thought, each action and every second with crytal-clear, and utterly emotionless accuracy.

I also never had to “deal with” any kind of post-traumatic stress – I didn’t find it stressful. There was a situation that required a specific kind of action, I performed the action. The end.

[sub]I seriously think that some brain mechanism kicked in to put me in “automatic mode” – since fear or panic might have affected my performance, a gear clicked into place to keep all emotions and stress “turned off.”[/sub]

13

Automatic mode! That’s the word I was looking for.

I think it would be impossible to be any other way in such a situation because if you were, you’d probably go nuts! ehehe!

But, I guess everyone is different too, but a truly uncaring person would have done NOTHING, imho.

14

Beeblebrox, although it WAS a “crisis situation” it wasn’t YOUR crisis. I mean, this guy was a total stranger, right? Don’t know him or his family… so it’s nowhere near like confronting this situation in a friend or relative.

I don’t think your reaction is all THAT unusual. Maybe not common, but neither is being left-handed yet we don’t think left-handedness is bizarre, either. If EMT’s weren’t able to render aid with something like the same “unaffectedness” they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs at all, ditto for emergency room doctors and nurses and fire fighters and… well, maybe you have the personality for that sort of job even if that’s not your chosen profession.

I find that when there is a crisis, if I can DO something, I tend to react (or “not react”, as you might put it) much as you did in that situation. It’s when I CAN’T help that I stand on the sidelines and get wiggy.

If it didn’t bother you and it continues not to bother you - don’t worry about it. You did what you could, just too damn bad it didn’t help the guy survive. You’re right, it WAS sort of like giving a quarter to a homeless man - you hope it will help, but you don’t know if it really will help or not. In any case, it won’t hurt anyone.

15

I think when you look back on it in years to come you can only be proud that you were able to try to do something.

I’m proud of you.

16

Beeblebrox, I’m an ER nurse, so I’ve seen my fair share of code blue situations (like, at least one a week for about six months now). I don’t get all worked up about it – win or lose. I never have, not even the first time I gave CPR to a patient. (there have been two very rare exceptions to this rule in my career). It’s not being cold or callous, it’s simply giving myself some emotional distance. Sounds like you’ve done the same thing. If it hits you later and you’re upset, that’s okay, but if not, don’t worry about it. There is no right or wrong way to feel about what happened.

BTW, I, too, am very proud of you.

17

Like Broomstick said, it wasn’t your crisis. And, from what you said, he was already dead when you came by. I really don’t see that your reaction is too weird. But, good job trying to help. :slight_smile:

18

good man for trying.

you’re detached, but why shouldn’t you be?
no rules in these situations.

19

I know nothing about which you went through, not sure how I would deal with it actually.

My hat is off to you, be proud! :smiley:

20

You’re a good person for trying, ** Beeblbrox. **

I wish I knew CPR. Several years ago, I was working at a gas station. A man fell down in the parking lot and stopped breathing. A panicked customer ran in to tell us. My co-worker was a volunteer EMT, so I urged her to go out and help him. She refused, giving me a disgusted look. “He might be sick, or something.”

The man was not spitting up blood, or anything like that. Had I known CPR, I would have tried it myself, but I’ve heard that rather than helping, an uneducated person might actually HURT, rather than help.

By the time the ambulance arrived, the man was dead. They tried, but there was nothing that could be done.

Maybe my co-worker couldn’t have saved him, but I never looked at her the same after that.