When were you last really scared?We'd been watching the Shining. We were staying in an old church building. In hindsight, taking the shortcut home after midnight, in the mist, through the old graveyard was a bad idea.
I'm not sure what started it, but suddenly all the hairs on my neck had gone up and I was crapping myself. It was almost as bad as when, after a few cups of coffee too many and buzzing on caffeine, I got freaked out by my own reflection in the toilets.
When were you last really scared?
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chthonic, Thu 22 Feb 2007, 15:43)
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Dead mans' heartbeatI was mentoring a new student paramedic and we were sent to a patient in cardiac arrest.
The patients' rigor mortis was a sure fire clue that he was indeed very dead so needless to say there was little for us to do but wait for the police to arrive.
The student asks me what procedure do we follow if there was no rigor mortis or if we wanted to stop resuscitation etc.
I explained to him that one of the criteria is to connect the patient to the heart monitor / defibrillator and check that asystole (flatline) is present in two or more leads.
We were still waiting for the police and as it was the student’s first cardiac arrest I connected the deceased to the monitor as described and switched it on.
"Beep…beep…beep…" the unmistakable sound of a heartbeat coming though the monitor.
I nearly had a cardiac arrest myself until I realized that the monitor had detected the deceased’s internal pacemaker….
(, Mon 26 Feb 2007, 1:06, Reply)
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