back.
I am also ill at ease with the machinery involved in prehospital care. I have never been a technological person. When my computer fails or the TV remote malfunctions, I am clueless. I wander into Michael’s adjoining office looking for help. Now I have to learn how to use machinery that will save people’s lives. I can no longer afford to stand dumbly and stare at it like I do when the TV goes on the blink. I have to learn how to use a semiautomatic defibrillator, a machine that analyzes and shocks a person’s heart rhythm back to normal. The machine, which is small and wildly expensive, is not nearly automated enough for my tastes. The
semi
in
semiautomated
means we still have to do things like turn it on and push buttons.
Shocking a person back to life involves shaving the hair off a patient’s chest (hopefully men patients, not women or relatives of Bigfoot) to assure correct contact between the skin and the pads. We have to apply the pads in the correct places, check to make sure there is no pulse, press the button, and let the machine analyze the heartbeat. If it is shockable, we have to yell, “Clear,” make sure no one, including us, is touching the patient, deliver the shock, recheck the pulse, do CPR, reanalyze, and reshock until the person is stable or still dead. It is a long process with great margin for error.
The goofiest thing is that the defibrillator talks to you, tells you what it is doing, and it has a built-in microphone that, when turned on, records every word you or anyone on the scene says. This is like having a spy in the ranks, someone who will rat you out if you make a mistake.
“What is the first thing you are going to say when you arrive at a scene and someone is in cardiac arrest?” Frank asks us. The class mumbles various answers.
“No!”
Frank says with authority. “You will all say, ‘Oh, shit!’” We all laugh, and Frank tells us to think it, not say it, and not to verbalize anything like, “I have no idea what I am doing” or “I am too incompetent to do this job,” because it will be preserved on tape for lawyers to have their way with for the rest of eternity.
Huge excitement. We are finally getting the stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs that Frank has been promising us for weeks. They have arrived, and Frank, seeing the class’s excitement, has started yelling at us in his loudest voice over the buzz in the room. “Listen up, people,” he says, trying to shut us up as his assistant passes out the boxes that the medical supplies come in. Frank wants us to sit still like soldiers and open the boxes in unison, and let him explain the proper use of the things. But the class is wild with glee at the new official medical supplies. With a stethoscope around our necks we will look like real professionals, we will look like doctors on TV, like we stepped out of
ER
.
Dot and I decide we will take each other’s blood pressure. I have never done this before, nor has she. “Me first,” I say. She obligingly rolls up her sleeve. I notice how thin her wrists are, how small and white her arm is. Under her lumpy array of sweatshirts and down jackets she is tiny and womanly. I wrap the cuff of the sphygmomanometer around her upper arm, I place the stethoscope in my ears and the bell on the artery point near the crook of her elbow. I start to squeeze the bulb, I keep squeezing, I watch with glee as it rises, 110, 130, 160, 180, 200 . . . I keep squeezing. Dot is suddenly screaming in pain. Her face matches her maroon hair.
“Stop it, you’re killing me!” she wails. I have no idea how high to send the needle before I deflate it. I have no idea how to deflate it, I haven’t found the metal screw that controls the pressure.
Frank is still trying to get control. “People, people, I need you to take your seats and listen to me,” he is saying. Dot’s wails are drowning out his words. I finally find the screw that deflates the cuff, she collapses chestfirst on her
I am also ill at ease with the machinery involved in prehospital care. I have never been a technological person. When my computer fails or the TV remote malfunctions, I am clueless. I wander into Michael’s adjoining office looking for help. Now I have to learn how to use machinery that will save people’s lives. I can no longer afford to stand dumbly and stare at it like I do when the TV goes on the blink. I have to learn how to use a semiautomatic defibrillator, a machine that analyzes and shocks a person’s heart rhythm back to normal. The machine, which is small and wildly expensive, is not nearly automated enough for my tastes. The
semi
in
semiautomated
means we still have to do things like turn it on and push buttons.
Shocking a person back to life involves shaving the hair off a patient’s chest (hopefully men patients, not women or relatives of Bigfoot) to assure correct contact between the skin and the pads. We have to apply the pads in the correct places, check to make sure there is no pulse, press the button, and let the machine analyze the heartbeat. If it is shockable, we have to yell, “Clear,” make sure no one, including us, is touching the patient, deliver the shock, recheck the pulse, do CPR, reanalyze, and reshock until the person is stable or still dead. It is a long process with great margin for error.
The goofiest thing is that the defibrillator talks to you, tells you what it is doing, and it has a built-in microphone that, when turned on, records every word you or anyone on the scene says. This is like having a spy in the ranks, someone who will rat you out if you make a mistake.
“What is the first thing you are going to say when you arrive at a scene and someone is in cardiac arrest?” Frank asks us. The class mumbles various answers.
“No!”
Frank says with authority. “You will all say, ‘Oh, shit!’” We all laugh, and Frank tells us to think it, not say it, and not to verbalize anything like, “I have no idea what I am doing” or “I am too incompetent to do this job,” because it will be preserved on tape for lawyers to have their way with for the rest of eternity.
Huge excitement. We are finally getting the stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs that Frank has been promising us for weeks. They have arrived, and Frank, seeing the class’s excitement, has started yelling at us in his loudest voice over the buzz in the room. “Listen up, people,” he says, trying to shut us up as his assistant passes out the boxes that the medical supplies come in. Frank wants us to sit still like soldiers and open the boxes in unison, and let him explain the proper use of the things. But the class is wild with glee at the new official medical supplies. With a stethoscope around our necks we will look like real professionals, we will look like doctors on TV, like we stepped out of
ER
.
Dot and I decide we will take each other’s blood pressure. I have never done this before, nor has she. “Me first,” I say. She obligingly rolls up her sleeve. I notice how thin her wrists are, how small and white her arm is. Under her lumpy array of sweatshirts and down jackets she is tiny and womanly. I wrap the cuff of the sphygmomanometer around her upper arm, I place the stethoscope in my ears and the bell on the artery point near the crook of her elbow. I start to squeeze the bulb, I keep squeezing, I watch with glee as it rises, 110, 130, 160, 180, 200 . . . I keep squeezing. Dot is suddenly screaming in pain. Her face matches her maroon hair.
“Stop it, you’re killing me!” she wails. I have no idea how high to send the needle before I deflate it. I have no idea how to deflate it, I haven’t found the metal screw that controls the pressure.
Frank is still trying to get control. “People, people, I need you to take your seats and listen to me,” he is saying. Dot’s wails are drowning out his words. I finally find the screw that deflates the cuff, she collapses chestfirst on her
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