How To Save a Life

I had the incredible privilege this week of being involved in saving a life. I'm sure that happens regularly, but it is usually not as obvious. It is likely the most significant moment of my intern year so far. Here's the short version...

At 5pm our team was paged to come see a patient of ours who had had surgery several days prior. Acutely his blood pressure was very low and he felt light headed (there's more to it but I'm trying to keep this brief). I quickly transferred him to the ICU and as soon as we rolled into the ICU he started seizing and became unresponsive and his abdomen instantly became distended. We quickly noticed (he was in the process of being hooked up to their monitors) that he had stopped breathing. I was unable to feel any pulses so we quickly started CPR. I taught the medical students to do compressions as someone ran to get blood, paged anesthesia to intubate the patient, started giving code drugs, paged staff to come to the hospital stat... I quickly ran to the OR and told them that we needed an OR now as a patient was hemorrhaging and would be dead within minutes. They told me that there was no room available, no staff, no anesthesia and therefore we would be unable to bring our patient back. At that moment I made it clear that this wasn't optional and we didn't need anything but instruments. Since the charge nurse was less than helpful I ran from OR to OR calling for any available help and managed to round up 3 anesthesiologists, a scrub nurse, and several other OR nursing staff. We grabbed an available surgeon who was in the hospital and wheeled our patient to the OR within minutes. The staff surgeon (who drove in at 110mph on the highway) ran in as we were ready to open the abdomen. As soon as we did we were met by 5+ liters of blood (an average adult has approximately 6 liters of blood). Staff told us we had one chance to get to the bleeding artery (a branch directly off the aorta) before he exsanguinated entirely. We succeeded and quickly controlled the bleeding as the anesthesiologists frantically kept resuscitating the patient. When we were done the room looked like a slaughter house. It was amazing!

The next day when I walked into the ICU I saw a man breathing on his own, talking and asking for more pain medicine. It was the most incredible realization that this relatively young man is alive without any real residual damage (other than a large scar on his abdomen) when he was within minutes of losing his life. I had fun walking around to the nurses on the floor that had picked up quickly on his unstable condition to tell them that their quick thinking was essential to his good outcome.

I spoke with the patient and without getting too graphic explained how miraculous it is that he is alive.

I am so thankful to have been an integral part in resuscitating this man!