My Moment of Complete Success
When we got to the gym my stomach dropped at the sight of Scotty, the 7th
grade girls’ PE teacher, furiously doing compressions on a 12-year-old Rachel
in the far corner of the dank and stuffy gym.
All the other girls were huddled in the opposite corner like a herd of
traumatized sheep. Mr. Dickerson, Brooke
and I ran to the sick girl to find her chin bleeding profusely, lips turning blue, and
no pulse. We immediately took over on
compressions and ventilations. I was in
charge of ventilations for a bit, while the first aid instructor did
compressions, then we swapped and I took over compressions while he did
ventilations. I was surprised at the
fact that my mind was focused and my vision clear as I used all my strength to
compress her chest halfway down to her spine. We soon realized that we would need to shock
her with an AED to get her heart started, so Brooke and I ran to the nurse’s
office. I had never seen an Automated
External Defibrillator before, so I started looking frantically for the machine. I grabbed what I thought could be the right
device, and as we ran back to the old gym I began to panic at the thought of
Rachel dying because I grabbed the wrong piece of equipment. I was washed over with a wave of relief when Mr. Dickerson said it was the right device.
After cutting off her clothes we shocked her. Her whole body convulsed as the electricity ran through her veins and nerves. The shock still didn’t jump start her heart so we continued CPR. After doing CPR for a moment we shocked her again, and this time we were able to find a weak pulse on her neck. She then started agonally breathing. At this time the paramedics burst through the side doors of the gym all at once and took over from there. When the responsibility was no longer so heavy on me, I entered a strange world of daze and marvel. I couldn’t believe what I had just done.
I was 14 years old, and a freshman
going to American Fork Junior High. I was a member of the medical first
responders’ team, and I helped take part in saving the life of a fellow student
one day in September of 2010.After cutting off her clothes we shocked her. Her whole body convulsed as the electricity ran through her veins and nerves. The shock still didn’t jump start her heart so we continued CPR. After doing CPR for a moment we shocked her again, and this time we were able to find a weak pulse on her neck. She then started agonally breathing. At this time the paramedics burst through the side doors of the gym all at once and took over from there. When the responsibility was no longer so heavy on me, I entered a strange world of daze and marvel. I couldn’t believe what I had just done.
This was a moment in my life when I experienced complete success.
