“Last time we met, you were called John”
“Medic 9 reporting,” EMS squawked over the radio. “We’re coming in with male patient, approximately 60–65 years old, found in cardiac arrest. He’s been down for about 30 minutes by now, we’ve been doing CPR, gave him epi and amiodarone, we shocked him. Continuing CPR, ETA is about 15 minutes.”
Around the ER the acute care team sighed.
You don’t want to think it, you know it sounds bad, but you’ve seen it so many times: patient will come in, they’ve been down for a while, we’ll try some more CPR, try everything we can, but eventually we’ll have to pronounce him dead; another one lost. So many times these patients are older, there are probably comorbidities, and when they’ve been down for a while… sometimes it’s just not reversible. We’re just doctors, not miracle workers. We can’t fix everything.
But we don’t predict the future, and of course we have to try. In any case, we were ready. EMS brought the patient in, we hooked him up. No heart rhythm.
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