Roses and free coffee

I had one of those evenings at work where I realized it could have been the script for one of those medical drama tv shows. Mind you, the only medical tv shows I watch are "House" or "scrubs" and I never have watched "ER", but I hear those drama shows eat stuff like this up.



At about 6:00 pm, we hear an overhead call for the Rapid Response Team (aka, RRT call). This is like a call for help from a nurse on the floor, outside of ICU, who has a patient that is suddenly not doing well and needs immediate help before the patient becomes worse. Sometimes these RRT calls turn into "Code Blue" calls if the patient goes into cardiac or respiratory arrest. Other times, the problem is solved by the RRT team and the patient is stabilized. The charge nurse from ICU, a couple of assistant managers and at least 1 respiratory therapist respond to the RRT calls.



On this RRT call, the patient is still "ok" (by ok, i mean barely breathing, horrible skin color, drenched in sweat, eyes wide and bulging and barely able to say 'ok'), but if we don't do something soon he will be a code call. They attempted to stabilize him and transport him to ICU for immediate intubation (to be placed on a ventillator). It must have been a busy day for the anesthesiologists, because it turns out we only have one anesthesiologist left available who can really intubate a patient for us in this situation. The other doctors that could do this for us in ICU are in the OR or not in the hospital yet. It turns out the doctor that is in our ICU attempting to help with our patient is being paged back to labor and delivery for an emergency c-section (emergency surgical removal of the baby from the mom).



He is looking at us while on the phone and calmly asking the the nurse calling about the c-section if he has 5 minutes. She told him the baby wasn't doing well and maybe they would have 5 minutes. He never lost his cool, panicked, yelled or anything. Calm and cool all the way, but the look in the doctor's eyes said volumes. He was looking down into the face of a 60+ year old man that if we don't treat soon would die and just hung up on a nurse dealing with a young woman and her unborn child. A patient nearer the end of his life who can't breathe and a patient just trying out life for the first time and hasn't even taken its first breath. All the chaos in that ICU room stopped for a second to recognize this problem and the next second we moved lightning fast to get our patient on the ventillator as fast as possible so the doctor could go help with the delivery of the baby. I think we had our patient entubated in less than 1 minute and the doctor ran downstairs.


We found out later, the c-section was very complicated and 4 doctors were down there but they had a happy outcome. Baby boy and mom were doing ok. As for our patient on ICU, he ended up not making it and passed away about 3 hours later.



It had me thinking though. A new life comes into the world in the room directly below us, while one life leaves us. And meanwhile, all around us in the hospital these types of things are happening everyday.



So, when I was enjoying breakfast at Starbucks with my daughter this morning, I really savored everything. Every breath I took, even if it meant I was standing in line or waiting at a stop light, was special. The daughter's chattiness was enjoyed more as health and vitality. The morning was gorgeous!





Then I experienced a littly pity for a man who came in to Starbucks. He reminded me of the man that had died last night. In his 60s, big belly maybe 5' 8". He asked for a small decaf coffee and when he was told he would have to wait 3 whole minutes for a fresh cup, said, "Ok, I'll have small regular coffee." He was told that the regular coffee was also brewing and he could just have a cup of coffee on the house in less than 3 minutes. What did he do? He huffed and stormed out of the shop. He was just offered a free cup of coffee if he could manage to control himself and wait 3 whole minutes. That kind of anger and stress, plus the weight, his age . . . adds up to trip to an ICU near you soon. I wanted to touch his shoulder, as he was standing next to me and say, "3 minutes isn't long and it is a free coffee. Breath. Relax. Then enjoy your coffee."

So, please stop and smell the roses and try to enjoy a free coffee when one is offered to you.