Do you know CPR?

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And if not, is this a nagging source of guilt and shame in your life?

I fear that if the moment comes when a friend or loved one or complete stranger needs CPR and all I can offer is The Kiss of This-Probably-Isn't-Helping, I am going to feel like a very bad mang indeed.

I am consoled by the fact that I do know the Heimlich Maneuver. I think I do anyway. I mean it looks pretty easy, right?

― Aaron A., Sunday, 26 January 2003 03:08 (twenty-three years ago)

I have CPR certification but I think if I had to perform it on someone I'd kill them. It was not a nagging source of guilt and shame before I got certified but now it is a nagging source of fear that I'll have to do it, and I'll kill the person.

― Maria (Maria), Sunday, 26 January 2003 04:26 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm sure in that case you could get a decent plea bargain, at least... maybe manslaughter or something.

― Aaron A., Sunday, 26 January 2003 04:43 (twenty-three years ago)

I have a pretty good idea - I kind of got teaching from my ex-wife who was an expert first-aider. Oddly, they change the rules every few years. The proportion of time you spent on the kiss bit and the time on the pumping the heart seems to alter.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 26 January 2003 12:11 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, Bad Moon Rising, Susie Q, Who'll Stop the Rain. Classic.

― gazza, Sunday, 26 January 2003 14:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah I'm supposedly qualified to teach basic CPR if anyone wants to learn, but although my cert is still valid I have forgotten. I think I'd still be good enough at it, though it is a very very tricky biznezz and the order in which you call for help or do a few breaths and compressions etc is officially changed all the time and this makes it very very confusing. Generally I think now the wisdom is that you just get help first no matter what and then come back and do the CPR stuff.

― Ronan (Ronan), Sunday, 26 January 2003 14:51 (twenty-three years ago)

I did mine a couple of years ago, and we were told, check all the vital signs, if they're not breathing give them 5 breaths, then phone for help. That way they're getting some oxygen to the brain and so reducing the risk of brain damage.
I can never remember how many breaths to do to how many heart compressions though. I know it's different for adults and children. Anyone able to remind me?

― Celeste (Celeste), Sunday, 26 January 2003 17:11 (twenty-three years ago)

God I can barely remember, 5 for a child and 15 for an adult, two breaths I think in between. That could be wrong though I really should look at the stuff again.

― Ronan (Ronan), Sunday, 26 January 2003 17:22 (twenty-three years ago)

That's right ronan. let me through! I have a first aid certificate!

― isadora (isadora), Sunday, 26 January 2003 21:09 (twenty-three years ago)

I like the way the baby mannequins lungs are teabags.

― Ronan (Ronan), Sunday, 26 January 2003 21:58 (twenty-three years ago)

we did a first aid course in school.

I kind of remember how to do the CPR stuff. I don't think it's *that* hard. I probably would not be able to do it in real life, though.

ian

― DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 27 January 2003 12:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Yep, I'm qualified - 5 and fifteen though I cannot remember and hopefully will never have to do it.

It is of course an only slightly comforting statisticv that nine tme out of ten when you are called on to do CPR the punter will die anyway.

― Pete (Pete), Monday, 27 January 2003 12:24 (twenty-three years ago)

urgh, I signed my name at the end of my post, like some kind of tard.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 27 January 2003 14:50 (twenty-three years ago)

And now everyone knows your name is Ian!!!

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 27 January 2003 14:51 (twenty-three years ago)

five years pass...

No, I don't, but I know a cat who does.

http://i33.tinypic.com/2akea7r.jpg

― StanM, Sunday, 20 July 2008 14:52 (seventeen years ago)

If that's CPR, than I'm Marcus fucking Welby.

― Pleasant Plains, Sunday, 20 July 2008 15:56 (seventeen years ago)

It's Cat Paw Resuscitation!

― StanM, Sunday, 20 July 2008 16:09 (seventeen years ago)

eleven years pass...

don't u die on me

― ill fuckin put a paste on those (Neanderthal), Sunday, 9 February 2020 06:11 (six years ago)

I could do with a refresher course. Studied it in 2012 on a Fas course and have never used it. So yeah very rusty.
Thought it would be a useful thing to know. Alongside other 1st aid techniques.

― Stevolende, Sunday, 9 February 2020 09:23 (six years ago)

funny read about breaths which are no longer recommended

(just hard chest compressions, including this out of civic duty)

― otm into winter (rip van wanko), Sunday, 9 February 2020 15:52 (six years ago)

jfc the one time nobody writes "great revive"....good job bottling that open goal guys

― ill fuckin put a paste on those (Neanderthal), Sunday, 9 February 2020 15:55 (six years ago)

xpost I did hear that. do people who were trained before that guidance came out have to be re-certified?

― ill fuckin put a paste on those (Neanderthal), Sunday, 9 February 2020 15:56 (six years ago)

lol you should have given it some time, i'm an idiot

― otm into winter (rip van wanko), Sunday, 9 February 2020 16:10 (six years ago)

what is it now? just keep airway open, pump the chest? but the key is, HARD. if it feels like your going to break a rib, or even DO break a rib, keep going

― otm into winter (rip van wanko), Sunday, 9 February 2020 16:13 (six years ago)

don't give up yet

great revive

― Brad C., Sunday, 9 February 2020 16:14 (six years ago)

sorry but you're getting my life-giving oxygen

― whistling (brownie), Sunday, 9 February 2020 16:22 (six years ago)

don't we all just remember The Office where you are supposed to sing Staying Alive as the rhythm for chest compressions?

I keep thinking about buying a suture kit to start practicing.

― Yerac, Sunday, 9 February 2020 18:19 (six years ago)

Grim as it sounds, my CPR instructor pointed out that CPR is only rarely effective. Most people who require CPR die anyway. Consequently, you should never worry about hurting the person you are doing hard chest compressions on, or whether you remember how to do it exactly right. Instead, you should consider the recipient to be as good as dead anyway. At best you might extend their viability for a few minutes until you are too exhausted to continue. If no further help arrives in that time, they are goners.

― A is for (Aimless), Sunday, 9 February 2020 19:35 (six years ago)

Instead, you should consider the recipient to be as good as dead anyway

My man.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Sunday, 9 February 2020 19:38 (six years ago)

It is true though; I did a cpr/first aid/backdraft style fire ext course last year, and the instructor was honest enough to say the same, more or less.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Sunday, 9 February 2020 19:39 (six years ago)

four years pass...

performed CPR in the field tonight for the first time in my life. I’ve done it and led it countless times in the hospital, but being alone without other help is really its own thing. pretty traumatizing tbh, not least for this poor man’s multigenerational family who had to watch

― brony james (k3vin k.), Saturday, 13 July 2024 04:38 (one year ago)

Damn, that’s intense. Hope you’re okay

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Saturday, 13 July 2024 05:47 (one year ago)

thanks kingfish. I was able to revive him momentarily, but he lost pulses shortly afterward and I had to resume. we were in a big quad on a college campus and no one was able to find a nearby AED until EMS arrived. he turned out to have a shockable rhythm, so those were valuable minutes. I was pretty shaken by the what-ifs and the family’s grief, even moreso than when I do this at work because I just felt so constrained by the environment and my lack of control. I am not sure what happened after he was but his prognosis is very grim and it continues to eat at me.

I gathered afterward that the man was the grandfather of a teenage girl who had been there for a college visit. the two were alone when I was walking home from playing basketball: I saw her across the way crying hysterically on the phone, looking at a man (seated facing away from me on a park bench) who didn’t seem to be moving. after about 10 minutes of my own CPR and then EMS’s arrival, the man’s daughter/teenager’s mom and another woman made their way up the stairs toward us, completely oblivious as to what was taking place because the girl had been on the phone with dispatch the entire time. they were still a good 100 yards away, so the girl handed me her phone and ran toward them frantically, and it was when one of them gave the most banal wave in response that I lost it, anticipating what they were about to experience. just an unspeakably horrible thing to witness, especially considering the setting.

anyway just needed to write that here for my own therapy…sorry if this is upsetting to anyone

― brony james (k3vin k.), Saturday, 13 July 2024 15:49 (one year ago)

I am not sure what happened after he was

…taken away in the ambulance

― brony james (k3vin k.), Saturday, 13 July 2024 15:51 (one year ago)

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