LEARN CPR FOR GOOD MENTAL HEALTH
From http://jaajoe.com/

There are hundreds of aspects of the design of the human body that are
awe-inspiring and that cause me to express daily gratitude to my
Creator, but perhaps the one design characteristic that is most
indicative of God's mercy is in the functioning of memory. The
complicated memory processes of the human brain could be discussed at
length by those who are much more knowledgeable than I. I only wish to
note that God's mercy is particularly evident to me when it comes to
the way in which I am able to deal with painful memories. I find that
I am able to compartmentalize painful memories so that, with the
healing passage of time, an event in my life that caused great anguish
when it occurred, will eventually cause just a short period of
internal sadness when brought to mind.



Of course, this merciful compartmentalization only works if I do not
begin to intentionally recall the details of the painful event. Once I
begin the process of recalling details, the anguish, the sadness, and
sometimes even the anger will return. I am certain that psychologists
have a name for the memory functions and the emotional turbulence that
I am describing, but regardless of the scientific description, I am
going to recall today the details of a painful memory of mine and
share those details in this article. This is not something that I want
to do. Hell, I have tears coming to my eyes right now even though I
have only just begun to contemplate the event that I will describe.
But I believe that what I have to say here may possibly save a life in
the future, and I can endure the pains of my past memories if by doing
so I can assist someone with realizing the joys of their future hopes.



Today is an anniversary for me, but it is not one that I celebrate nor
one that I care to remember. It was on this date six years ago that my
mother passed away.


At that time I was trying to get a small company up and running, and
there was quite a bit of manual labor that needed to be done. While
speaking to my father on the phone, I mentioned that I was having
difficulty in finding the time needed to finish building a
manufacturing area. He immediately offered to assist me in putting up
some walls, and so we agreed that he and my mother would come and
spend a few weeks with my son and I.



We spent several busy but enjoyable days together trying to balance
family time with factory time. Then, on a Thursday afternoon while he
and I were working together at the factory, my father began to
complain of pain in his right hand. The pain became so severe that we
finally quit working and headed home early.



The severe pain continued through the night, so at five o'clock Friday
morning I took him to the nearby regional hospital. The emergency room
personnel did some preliminary blood work, and wasted no time in
admitting him to the hospital. It took a little while for the doctors
to connect all of the dots, but they eventually determined that my
father had an aggressive staph infection in his hand that was
secondary to the carpal tunnel surgery that he had a few months prior.
The infection was rapidly spreading through his body, and they began
treating him with aggressive antibiotics in an effort to prevent the
infection from reaching his heart. They performed surgery on the hand
in an effort to clean out the infection, but despite their efforts, my
father's condition began to deteriorate.



There was no short-term chance of my father being released from the
hospital, to say nothing of the possibility of him making the five-
hour trip back to his home. So my mother and I began a routine of
getting up each morning, having breakfast, making sure that my son
caught the school bus, and then driving to the hospital. I would visit
my father for a short while, then I would leave him and my mother and
go to work. Around lunch time I would return to the hospital, and
either take my mother out for lunch or take her home to rest. Then we
went back to the hospital and my mother stayed there until I picked
her up at night.



We continued this routine until the following Friday. On that morning
we breakfasted as usual, and then my son headed off to school. I went
into the bathroom and began brushing my teeth. At this point I heard a
startled "Oh!" from my mother and I heard her fall to the floor.



Several years earlier, my mother had experienced a heart attack and
just four years prior to the date of this story she had open heart
surgery. When I heard the noise of my mother falling in the other
room, and subsequently saw her ash-gray complexion as she lay on the
floor, I had little doubt that her heart had quit. The emotional
stress of worrying over the condition of my father and the physical
stress of visiting him in the hospital had combined to deal a heavy
blow to an already weak heart.



I checked for a pulse and respirations and found neither, so I tore
open her blouse and began CPR. Of course it is difficult to remember
the actual sequence of events at that point. My focus was on saving my
mother's life, not on recording events for posterity. But I believe
that at either the fourth or fifth time that I administered breaths, I
received a mouth full of my mother's vomit.



I can not imagine a set of circumstances in which a person would find
another person's vomit in their mouth other than when a person is
performing CPR, so I can only assume that few who might be reading
this will have experienced what I am describing. I am fairly certain
that my reaction was the same reaction that any person would have
under similar circumstances, and it was a reaction over which I had
absolutely no control. I pulled away from my mother's mouth and began
vomiting myself.



I don't know how much time passed, but I imagine that it was only
fifteen or twenty seconds before I was able to control my nausea and
get back to the work of resuscitating my mother. Time passed - again I
have no idea how much - and she began breathing unassisted. I was
still unable to feel a pulse, and I did not have a great deal of
confidence in the breaths that she was taking, but I had to make a
decision. At some point, I needed to dial 911. Thinking that I would
only be away for thirty seconds, I sprinted to the bedroom and made
the call.



I could occupy the next fifty paragraphs with my descriptions of the
ineptitude of the 911 operator and the emergency personnel that
eventually arrived at my house, but that is not the point of this
story. Suffice it to say that I was away from my mother for more than
thirty seconds, and when I returned to her she was no longer
breathing. I continued CPR, but she never again drew a breath.



One's perception of the passage of time is always distorted when one
is waiting for life-saving help, so I am not certain of the amount of
time that elapsed before the ambulance actually arrived, but I would
hazard a guess of fifteen to twenty minutes. This may seem to be an
incredibly long response time, but I lived in a very rural area, and
the ambulance needed to travel at least fifteen miles. As I alternated
my compressions and breaths, I listened for the sound of the siren
with almost as much intensity as I listened for some small indication
of an involuntary breath from my mother.



I felt a tremendous wave of relief when I finally did hear the siren,
but the relief soon turned to frustration and indecision. As I
listened to the undulation of the ambulance siren, it became apparent
that the ambulance had passed my house twice. I should state here that
the confusion of the emergency personnel in the ambulance should be
blamed on me and my independent-minded neighbors. None of us had seen
the need to clearly mark our houses with numbers, and it would have
been difficult for anybody to find my house if their only point of
reference was the street address.



I waited until the sound of the siren indicated that the ambulance was
once again very near my house, and then I ran outside to wave it down.
The ambulance immediately turned into the driveway, and I returned to
performing CPR. At this point, I really had no hope that my mother
would recover, but my training had taught me to continue CPR until
medical personnel arrived. When the EMTs arrived at my mother's side,
I got up and walked outside. I knew from personal experience that the
last thing that they needed was a concerned family member hovering
over them.



A little while later a sheriff's deputy arrived. After spending a
little time inside the house, he came back outside to let me know that
the coroner was on his way. I remember very little of what happened
after that because my mind was focused on the dreaded task of having
to go to the hospital and tell my very sick father that he had just
lost the love of his life.



In the weeks and months following my mother's death, I re-hashed in my
mind the events that I have just described and I berated myself
severely for my poor performance and terrible decision-making. My mind
alternately told me that I should have called 911 sooner or that I
should have called 911 later. I told myself that if I had not stayed
on the phone with emergency services for such a long period of time,
then things would have turned out differently. I was especially hard
on myself regarding the vomiting incident. I told myself that I was
something less than a real man because I could not endure a little
vomit in my mouth without interrupting the CPR that my mother
desperately needed. Eventually, I was able to deal with my feelings of
guilt by remembering one simple fact: I had taken the time to be
trained to deal with emergencies and when an emergency came I had
performed my absolute best without hesitation.



And with that we come to the real point of my story. When my mother
had the heart attack that killed her, I was fully prepared to do CPR
without even a moment of hesitation. I had taught CPR for the American
Red Cross, and I had prior experience in performing CPR on real
people. In order to pay my way through college, I had taken a six
month course to become an Emergency Medical Technician and I had
worked as an ambulance attendant for three years. But even with all of
my prior training and preparedness, I still had feelings of guilt and
feelings that bordered on self-loathing subsequent to my mother's
death.



Now let's suppose that I had never learned to perform CPR. Let's
suppose that I had been given many opportunities to learn CPR, but I
had never felt that it was important enough. Let's suppose that when
my mother had her fatal heart attack, all that I could do was call 911
and then stand around for twenty minutes with my proverbial thumb in
my proverbial butt. Given such a set of circumstances, I can't imagine
the strong feelings of guilt and self-loathing that I would have
experienced.



My question to you, the reader, is do you think that you are somehow
exempt from such feelings of guilt? You have been given many
opportunities to learn CPR, and yet you allow American Idol or a
football game to take precedence. Do you really think that you will be
able to avoid the guilt associated with failing to learn CPR after you
helplessly watch a loved one perish before your eyes?



We all have to deal with feelings of inadequacy from time to time.
Don't compound these feelings by neglecting training that is
immediately available to you. For better mental health, please heed
the following three recommendations:



1. GET TRAINED IN CPR IMMEDIATELY. When it comes to this subject,
there are no excuses allowed or accepted. The American Heart
Association had made it very easy. You can purchase an in-home
training kit from them for under $30.



2. WHEN TAKING THE CPR COURSE, TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. When I taught CPR
for the American Red Cross, I often encountered people in class that
were just killing time. Schools, universities, and factories would
schedule CPR classes for their students or employees, and many would
look upon the classes as merely an opportunity to get away from work
or their schooling. I dearly hope that none of them ever came to
regret their glibness.



3. REVIEW THE COURSE ANNUALLY. The United States military understands
that the only way to deal with panic in a crisis situation is to train
people until their training becomes second nature. Similarly, you can
not take a CPR course once and then expect to remember everything
twenty years later when you see a loved one dying. Turn off the
television and review the course.



Below are links to both the American Heart Association and the
American Red Cross CPR web pages. Through these links, you can find
the most convenient way for you to learn CPR as soon as possible.


http://www.americanheart.org/present...tifier=3011764


http://www.redcross.org/services/hss/courses/

http://depts.washington.edu/learncpr/

http://jaajoe.com