...but he's not dead yet!!!

This is the story of Mr. K, or just K as I'll call him...  K showed up in the ED back in the fall of 2004.  He came to the ED complaining of this uncontrollable vomiting that happened to start while he was working on a construction site.  Well, since he was causing such a disturbance with all the vomiting, he was placed on a hall bed to wait for his EKG.  Between fits of vomiting K said something about chest pain, which prompted the nurses to get an EKG.  Unfortunately, K's heart couldn't wait for the EKG and decided to stop beating before we could do anything about it...  The nurses noticed it mostly because K suddenly stopped vomiting and became uncharacteristically quiet.

I was sitting in a separate area of the ED and wasn't anywhere near K when his heart stopped...  I just saw the nurses---  one of them pumping his chest--- pushing his bed, running, into the resuscitation room in my area.  

I jumped up and ran into the room with the nurses to 'run the code' and find out what happened.  I got the brief story while I was getting ready to intubate K and in ran the Trauma team who happened to be in the ED as K was rushed into the resuscitation room.  I alerted them that this was NOT a trauma CPR but a medical CPR as they pitched in to help save K's life...

After one round of drugs and 3 rapid defibrillations (shocks), the trauma surgeons put an ultrasound probe on K's chest to see if there was any cardiac activity; which is something they do quite often in a trauma arrest.  Seeing no cardiac motion, the decided that K was dead and the code should be "called."

I, again, reiterated that K was a "medical" code and not a "trauma" code, and that we were NOT going to call it...  So, we kept going... and they were irritated (and not too subtle expressing their disapproval)...  This story is getting longer than I anticipated, so I'll bring it to a close.

After around 45 minutes of resuscitation efforts... multiple drug combinations and drips... multiple attempts at defibrillation (I lost count after 15 or so)... K's heart decided to beat on it's own.  Within 15 minutes of "stabilizing" him, K was in the cardiac cath lab.  A >95% occlusion of his LAD was opened nicely with a stent and K was off to the ICU to recuperate.  

...It's now 3 years later, and K still comes to the hospital for his clinic appointments...  I check his appointment list in the computer every so often just to see that he's still alive.  He is, by far, my best "save" ever.  I often wonder if he realizes how close he came to dying that day...