Sometimes

It was another busy evening at Frick Hospital emergency department when an ambulance radioed in saying they were bringing another chest pain to our emergency room. That was just what we needed. All of our monitor beds were full, either folk with chest pains or people with shortness of breath. I was wondering what I could do, when the doctor said he was planning to discharge a middle aged man in our bed number eight. He’d been medically cleared, so I grabbed a wheelchair, pulled out his I. V., and moved him into the middle aisle between the bottoms of the beds. I ripped the dirty sheet off the cart, did a quick wipe of the mattress with cleaning fluid, and tossed on a fresh sheet before going back into the triage area.

The man with chest pain, coming in by ambulance now had a bed. I was in the triage area that evening and as I bustled back and forth from triage area to the emergency room desk, I noticed that the man I’d earlier placed in the wheelchair was looking grayer and grayer as he waited for his paperwork to be completed. I decided to check the man in the wheelchair who was still waiting to be discharged. The man looked really sick. But before I could ask, he began to clutch his chest. I was so glad that one of the other beds had opened up. That patient had been admitted to the hospital taken to his room upstairs. The bed still wore a rumpled sheet and hadn’t been cleaned.

 “I need help in here!” I called, as the man started to collapse and slide to the floor out of the chair. A feeling of panic kicked in and I snatched him from the seat and tossed him onto the dirty bed. It was just in time. Normally I wouldn’t have been able to lift the man by myself. But it’s strange how adrenaline can give you extra strength.

The man’s heart had infarcted while waiting to be discharged from the emergency department. He didn’t arrest, but had a massive myocardial infarct. We stabilized him and sent him to a larger facility. I’m glad that we had been busy and the paper work was delayed. If the man had been on his way home and infarcted, he would never have survived. Sometimes things just happen for a reason.