I've started another blog with a good friend of mine. It's called DoNotResuscitateME and can be found at http://donotresuscitateme.blogspot.com. Yeah, original name, I know.
We've posted there sporadically, when the mood strikes. It was created as a venue for us to contemplate the idea of Do Not Resuscitate orders or living wills, when they're appropriate, and when they're really needed but not in place. We write from the perspective of experienced emergency medical providers in the field.
Feel free to go have a look around over there.
I'd not planned to blog about my other blog, but today changed that. I ran into the wife of one of my patients who, honestly, I didn't expect to live too long. She was excited to tell me how well he is doing, and how they expect to bring him home soon. Wow, just plain W.O.W. That doesn't happen often. Most of the time when we get a "save", the patient doesn't live much longer, maybe a few days. At the most, we've given the family a few hours or days to assemble and have one more time to visit their loved one. Usually, though, resuscitation attempts are futile. They're traumatic for the patient's body, and they're even more traumatic for the family to see being performed.
But this patient is in now in that super-rare group of folks who will live for a while yet. He either wasn't as far gone as we thought, or something in our bag of medical magic tricks worked just right for him. The breath of life in an aluminum cylinder and a latex bag.
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