Voice of ICU -Cyril Rajan - 17 batch

There's only two cases where going up and down is considered normal

One is life and the other is the guidemap of life - ECG.

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A 67 year old was rolled into the emergency. His ECG was seemingly normal up and down like a roller coaster till it hit a flat line. What happened the next 1 hour is still a blur. Every single doctor, nurse and technician out there sprang to action and the entire dept was in frenzy. AMBU bag was passed, time keeper was set and chest compression was initiated. The curriculum of 30:2 was never followed as compression was instructed to be done at a stretch for 2 mins for one whole cycle.

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There in began my first ever CPR i actually gave. For every compression that was given seeing a small spike in the ECG gave me lil butterflies inside which was fast turned into moths when the line began going flat again. With each passing compression hands and legs started giving out. After each cycle pulse was checked with expectation like a fielder settling for a catch in the boundary line, but after every cycle there was only dissapointment as the catch was always evasive.

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The entire process got more demanding as everytime there was the most minor signs of life, the feeling of giving up was given up and whatver little energy that got left was summoned to pull the guy back who was holding his life by a very thin thread which was fast giving out. Denying swap of hands, ignoring the pop sound of chest went on with the miraculous hope of pulling the guy back to this side of the line. A gamble of life where even if the patient is fast improving can decline as fast as he improved.

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30 whole minutes later you'll think it's a 67 year old whose heart could barely beat, fighting against all odds to stay afloat, but no.

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When Lucifer is pulling at the rope of life from one end hungry to reap another soul as the grim reaper, it was the doctors, nurses and technicians tugging the rope taking the fight back. It was at that exact moment A Doctor was the only door of separation between life and death. Resilient till the very end, not losing faith and blindly swinging it all based only on just hope that the little strands of pericardium would respond to the adrenaline and chest compressions at one point or the other.

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All this happened while the entire city was fast asleep apart from the students burning midnight oil hoping to be one day in the same shoes as the one treating. The golden hour where the symphony of life was sang with the devil bashing at the bass and the doctor being the most perseverant Maestro with the stethoscope being the baton.

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For every life saved at every random Hour there is the role of a treating person having two letters preceding his name. When Lucifer tries to fork one's way to the hot boiling soup of hell, its Gabriel the guarding angel that wards away with his shining wings. Not all Gabriel bears the wings, some don the stethoscope. After all as the saying goes, medicine cures diseases but it takes a doctor to heal the patient.