Saturday, July 15, 2017

saving a life

"I thought she was dead," my wife said of a young woman whose friend had rushed into my wife's work space yesterday asking urgently for Narcan, the opiod overdose medication.

My wife works in a pretty static medical office. She helps to facilitate the visits of those appearing for treatment of muscular difficulties. It's pretty much rehabilitation paperwork ... insurance companies, making sure the forms are in order ... and here came a woman desperate for high-end, do-it-now medical help.

My wife went to a car where another young woman lay slumped and groggy. After ascertaining that the young woman in the car was not, in fact, dead, my wife began talking to her and hitting her. Open your eyes! Look at me! The not-yet-corpse complied while others called for emergency services.

Eventually, it all worked out. The patient was picked up; my wife warned the desperate friend, who had needle marks on her arms, to take a lesson from the situation; and things settled back to normal; there was paperwork to do.

But everything, I imagine, had changed. My wife had assisted in saving a life that was in danger of being lost. This is serious stuff. How does that square up with the hum-drum office life, the boring stuff, the ordinary stuff ... how do you process an emergency and then return to a point where there is no apparent emergency?

At third hand (hearing the tale from my wife), it sounds as if an earthquake had occurred.

Saving lives has its consequences.

"Serious" is a strange word.

2 comments:

  1. Your wife validates [Innate | Naive ] trust in other people, particularly those in the medical profession.

    Not to be too harshly political but given current events certain people of the Republican / Conservative / / Koch Brothers-Ryan-McConnell-Trump persuasion would have seen that kindness as misplaced and that druggies should have left to their own further devices, or at the very most Emergency Services. Hell, as I type this can hear friends and colleagues say, "Andy, don't get involved. These druggies might be pulling off a con for more drugs or looking for money from a law suit. Call 911 and stand down." I must admit, I might have listened.

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