Breathe

To hold someones life in your hands is something that I’ve never experienced. Of course there have always been times when I’ve held somethings life in my hands, such as an insect, and sadly when I think back on it, I chose to senselessly end it. But hey, we’ve all killed that roach that gives us the shakes.

But back to life, a person, a soul. Now really, this situation isn’t as dramatic as it would seem, but this guy has seriously scared the crap out of me a few times. This particular patient has a trach put in which is constantly connected to a ventilator, as one would expect.

Well for some reason, which I have not yet discovered, these ventilators are not securely fastened to the trach and can pop off with the just the slightest tension on the ventilators tube. Since we have to move this patient around to give him a bath, this trach pops off regularly.

I had never experienced this before, so when I did, naturally I kinda freaked out. We were almost to the room and the back up airsupply used for transport until we could reconnect him to the one in the room suddenly quit working. This was probably due to the fact that the nurses did not want to wait for the respiratory tech to come and make sure everything was connected correctly. Mistake.

So there we were, right in the middle of the unit, trying to decide whether we should try and fix the problem or rush him into the room. The rush idea was chosen. Mistake.

We quickly moved the bed and then it got stuck on the door track. Somehow tension was placed on the ventilation tubes and then there was a pop. The tube broke away from the trach. The patient convulsed, and as he came up off the bed a thick wad of phlegm shot out of his trach hole and projectiled onto his gown.

The nurse yelled to hurry and we got him into the room. I was frantically trying to reattach the tubes, even though the air supply wasn’t coming through. The next few minutes were intense and stressful but finally we got it. This was bad experience number one with this patient.

Now for bad experience number two. When I came into the unit I was informed that said patient was in hydro and that the nurses could use assistance. So I brought a new volunteer with me, so that he could learn the ropes. Long story short, the ventilator tubes came undone again, there was more convulsing, and more stressing, and more yelling. But finally we finished his bath and on we were to the transport.

Instead of using a transport air supply, we were using the hand pump air supply. The nurse took care of this until we got to the room. Then she told me to take over. I would be this mans air supply. I would control whether he breathed or didn’t breath. I would control how much oxygen was getting into his blood. I would control his life, just for a moment.

“Squeeze on 1, count 1, 2, and then squeeze again. 1, 1 2. Got it?” I took the bag and began to pump. One, one two. One, one two. I continued on in this manner. Then I noticed that the inflated part of the bag, which is supposed to be receiving oxygen, was not inflated well at all, and there was also that nasty phlegm stuff accumulating in it. Was I doing it correctly? I asked a nurse and she replied, well if you are wrong he will start to turn blue. I checked his complexion nervously... not blue. I continued to pump. One, one two. One, one two. Then he started to lip something to me.

“I can’t breathe..” My heart rate probably doubled. This is not what I wanted to hear. Maybe something like, “You’re doing a great job..” or something like that. Not, I can’t breathe. I just stared and continued to pump. One, one two. One, one two. Eventually the nurses came back and re-established his ventilator connection.

I walked out of the room at that point and began to wash my hands after disposing of my gloves and gown. As the warm water washed over my arms I took deep breaths. It was finally my turn to breathe.