Flatline

As I walked out of the elevator onto my floor this morning at work, I heard the overhead announcement I'd been simultaneously dreading and hoping for since I started at the hospital-- there was a code on my unit. I walked closer, knowing that I wouldn't really be able to participate since I didn't know the meds or quite how a cardiac arrest was run in the hospital, and basically picked a spot from which to observe.

I did that for awhile, and then realized when they started running out of stuff, that I could help by grabbing new supplies from the medroom. So on my first trip, I got saline, syringes and needles with which to draw up flushes. All went well until I went to make up the first syringe... I mean, I've done it a million times by now, but I was nervous and a little frightened about the whole situation, and I guess my hands were shaking more than normal, because I stuck myself on the tip of my dominant thumb with a needle I'd just unwrapped.

Crap. So now, not only was the flush I was trying to prepare garbage, but I'd also rendered my dominant hand out of commission for the next couple of minutes that it was going to take it to stop bleeding.

Oh well... I guess I hadn't really helped that much with the code after all. More importantly for me though, I learned a lot. Not enough to participate quite yet, and certainly not enough to be able to help run one... soon though, I hope. With all the excitement that had gone on, with all the people who'd been running around, and with the upset for the patient and his poor family, I was just glad not to have been in the way. And glad too that it was a clean/unused needle I stuck myself with. Phew... at least that was a relief.

Addendum, posted @ 7:12pm, 17 August 2005: Well Susan, when I posted this entry, I purposely didn't specify whether or not the patient survived the code. I don't know if I was trying to keep people guessing or just provide a little mild respect for the patient and family, or what. Who knows? I guess whatever it was wasn't effective though, and at this point it doesn't really matter much. So if you must know, the answer is no, he didn't make it.