COPD and asthma, although different, do have similarities – and they tend to run in families. If you have COPD you should learn about asthma and understand that it can be serious – very serious – even deadly. This is based on a true story, told from a respiratory therapist’s perspective. The names of people and places have been changed.
It was 11:15 pm on Labor Day evening as I sat down at the conference table for respiratory therapy staff report at Lakeside Hospital. I was exhausted – but relieved. I sighed, thinking, “It’s after 11:00 pm at the end of a long holiday weekend of perfect summer weather in a resort town and we haven’t had one bad car accident or drowning come through our doors. A good weekend, indeed!
Shift report took place at this table and typically consisted of the evening shift therapists telling the night shift therapists what was going on with the more remarkable patients in our facility; that there were currently a few chest pains in the ER, a premature baby in the nursery on oxygen, doing better now and stable; and passing along whatever therapy and tests needed to be done during the night to make sure everybody kept on breathing and living.
I was looking forward to going home, first checking on my husband and children, making sure all were safely tucked in their beds, then pouring a glass of wine and watching television until about 1:00 am when I’d turn off the lights and tumble into bed. As I unclipped the pager from my scrubs and slid it across the table to the night therapist, it went off. “Respiratory, Stat, to the emergency room – Class one.”
A “class one” in medical terms is a patient with no respirations and no heartbeat. Our staff of three dashed quickly, but calmly, to the ER, walked into trauma room one, and put on disposable gloves and yellow paper gowns. I grabbed the ambu bag and my colleague opened our sealed box of emergency respiratory supplies. Thoughts of punching the clock and going home were gone.
“Hey, Karen,” I said to the night nurse. “What do we have?”
“A child. Nine years old.”
My heart sank and thoughts flashed to my oldest child, a nine-year-old girl.
“With what?”
“Asthma attack.”
“No way. From where?”
“Ferndale.”
I immediately began to think of all the children I knew who were about that age, from that area, our regulars – “frequent flyers” we called them — who came to our hospital often with poorly controlled asthma.
No time to speculate. The automatic doors from the ambulance bay opened, we heard the boots of the paramedics and the click, click of a gurney with a light load cross the metal threshold to the ER.
Ryan was a nine-year-old boy with a handsome little face and brown hair. His hazel eyes were open. His stare was blank and empty. His body, pale and limp. The paramedics were doing CPR.
