Seconds COunt!!!!

[rayemtjax77]

For everyone out there that think seconds do not count... I had a 46y/o M pt walk.. notice I said walk.. into the Er with Severe CP w/SOB. Now mind you the recess room is about a 10second RUN to get to from the triage desk. I ran the guy back in a wheelchair... when I got him on the stretcher.. he coded (V-Fib), Pt turned blue from the nipple line up. 10 seconds... thats all it took... We shocked him... he went to the cath lab where he had a pacemaker put in.

[Just Plain Ruff]

god job but he was where he needed to be. Hospital ER, cath lab, good ER Staff - all things fell into place.

Had he waited any longer you might have found him stiff as a board in your parking lot.

[Dustdevil]

It's amazing how often this kind of thing happens. People use up their last bit of energy and determination to make it to the proper place to die. It's a basic primal instinct inside of us. In the animal kingdom, animals typically know when it is time to wander away from the pack and find a place to curl up and die. I've seen dogs fatally run over on the highway, but they somehow use that last 5 seconds of life to crawl to the side of the road to curl up in the grass and die. The interesting thing is that there is one other time you see this instinctive behaviour, and that is when a mother goes to give birth. Ever notice your pregnant dog or cat disappears right before giving birth, only to be found under a bed or in the back corner of a closet?

Luckily, this instinct, coupled with the intelligence we have developed through our evolution, leads to a lot of people getting to just the right place at just the right time. I'd be willing to bet that the patient in the above story had that textbook look of "impending doom" on his face too. That is one of the most ominous signs in medicine. Once you see it, you'll never forget it and always recognise it in the future.

[mrmeaner]

People use up their last bit of energy and determination to make it to the proper place to die.

Or they'll hang on in the hospital bed until a certain family member gets there and then pass when everyone steps out to get coffee. Wasn't it Mark Twain who stayed alive until he saw Haley's comet and then died a few days later?