code – Pulse

Over the Rainbow

David Corbin May 10, 2024 14 Comments

Two days after the bus crash, I died. It was March 1996. A bus traveling at 60 mph had hit the car I was in, shattering my fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae and instantly paralyzing me from the shoulders down.

I was only twenty years old, and father to a one-year-old son. I spent the following forty-eight hours at a nearby hospital, on life support in the ICU. I couldn’t speak or breathe on my own.

I survived those two days on a sense of faith, expressed in a mantra: This is just temporary.

Aftershocks

Darnell K. Adrian Williams Jr. June 30, 2023 16 Comments

It’s Monday. I wake up at 7:15 am, go down to my apartment building’s lobby and meet with friends to work out before the rest of the day begins. We do arms, chest and back for an hour, then my friend PJ and I hit the steam room and head back to our apartments.

I call my mom for five minutes, then shower, dress and, before breakfast, knock out some flashcards on my laptop, like any self-respecting first-year medical student.

Today I’m spending a shift in the ER as part of my clinical-medicine class.

First Code Blue

Leanne Louie April 28, 2023 5 Comments

When I started medical school, I kept hearing about “firsts.” The first time in the OR, the first delivery of a baby, the first death of a patient.

In a profession that is so intricately intertwined with the ultimate highs and lows of human life, there are a number of experiences that inevitably go on to leave permanent marks on the mind. I was always told that my first code blue would be one of these moments—and indeed, the night I first saw a code is one that will be forever engraved in my memory.

Gift of Gratitude

Naveen Menon November 18, 2022 13 Comments

We all remember our patients who die, though the first patient death really stands out from the rest. This was certainly true for me.

I was just starting the second year of my internal-medicine residency. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen someone die, but it was the first time I’d seen someone who’d been alive and well, and talking to me that morning, be dead by the afternoon–a shocking dichotomy that haunts me to this day.

Living-Room Code

Utsha Khatri May 1, 2020 5 Comments

It was a cold Friday morning, and my day started slow. I was a third-year emergency-medicine resident in West Philadelphia and was doing my EMS rotation.

I rode with the EMS lieutenant, who told me, “My job is to assist the medics with the bad stuff.” This, he explained, usually meant codes (cardiac arrests) and fires.

Then we got the first call and zipped through the city, lights and sirens blaring.

Detachedly, I wondered what type of cardiac arrest awaited us. When we walked into the apartment building and saw a twenty-three-year-old woman in the doorway, her face distraught and fearful, I knew.

The apartment was warm, well furnished and cozy. Firemen, who’d arrived on the scene first, knelt on the blue-carpeted floor to perform

First Time, Last Time

Kristin Nguyen August 30, 2019 8 Comments

“Deeper compressions! Deeper! Make sure you get that recoil!”

I push harder and lift off higher. I’m starting to sweat. My stethoscope is banging around my neck. I should have taken it off, I think. My hair is flying around my face. I should have tied it up. I’m on tiptoe; my legs are cramping. I should have stood on a step stool.

“All right, she’s getting tired. Next!”

Embarrassing…I only lasted through one round of compressions. Other people (taller, more muscular people) are lasting longer. I really need to lift weights. Doing chest compressions is much more physically demanding than I’d thought.

The Fighter

Pamela Obi January 1, 2017 No Comments

This was the third time he coded. Dean had been in the ICU for over a week without any visitors, telephone calls, flowers or balloons. He came in after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest which he survived and subsequently had another arrest halfway through his stay here. He sure was a fighter.

With special help from the ICU team, we found a contact number for his mother after doing some research on the internet. I was tasked to call her and inform her he was in the hospital.

Code Blue

Stephen W. Leslie November 30, 2012 3 Comments

Stephen W. Leslie

I was startled awake at 3:40 am by a loudspeaker blaring “Code Blue…Code Blue.”

As the hospital’s newly hired chaplain intern, I’d been sleeping in the overnight room. Stumbling out of bed and groggily changing out of my pajamas, I made sure to put on my hospital badge.

I made my way to the hospital’s “Z” building, where the ICU was located, and took the elevator to the fourth floor. The elevator opened onto a row of doorways, each decorated with a red warning sign: “Stop! Do Not Enter. Authorized Staff Only.”

I picked one and went through.

I’d guessed right: At the far end of a hallway, a group of gowned nurses swarmed around a woman lying in a hospital bed,

Cracking the Code

Zohar Lederman November 25, 2011 No Comments

Zohar Lederman

I am a medical student in Pavia, Italy, doing my fifth year out of six. It is summertime, and, as I’ve done every summer for years, I’ve returned to my small hometown in the south of Israel. There, among other things, I volunteer as an emergency medical technician (EMT) with Magen David Adom, the Israeli Red Cross.

It’s 7:30 on a Friday morning. I’m at the Red Cross office, talking with the paramedic and a doctor, when a young volunteer runs in.

“There’s a car pulling up outside–they’re bringing an unconscious patient!” he says.

The paramedic goes to get the advanced life support equipment, and the doctor

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: code

Over the Rainbow

Aftershocks

First Code Blue

Gift of Gratitude

Living-Room Code

First Time, Last Time

The Fighter

Code Blue

Cracking the Code

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: code

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