LITMIR.BIZ

       Bringing them back from the dead

      Usually, we find out about traffic incidents over the radio. Either someone dials 999, or CCTV cameras pick up weird traffic movements and discover that two finely engineered boxes of iron and plastic have reduced each other to a set of insurance claims, and their drivers and passengers to ‘casualties’.

      However, I once drove by the scene of one accident just as it happened. My friend Kim, who also happened to be my operator that day, and I had just finished with an incredibly grievous case of a sudden death caused by a drugs overdose. As I pulled out of a junction, a motorcyclist who had been thrown from his bike came skidding past us.

      We immediately stopped our car – blue lights blazing – using it to block the road, and got out to see what had happened.

      ‘He’s not breathing,’ Kim said, once she had run over to him and flipped his visor open. ‘I don’t think he’s breathing!’

      I checked the road quickly; our vehicle was holding back any traffic from coming our way, which would have to do in terms of protecting us.

      To be able to do fully effective CPR²¹, you usually also need to be able to give rescue breaths. To do that, you need access to the patient’s mouth, and you’ll be unsurprised to hear that a full-face motorcycle helmet doesn’t really help in that respect.

      It is commonly believed that you should never remove a motorcyclist’s helmet if he’s been in an accident. As a general rule, that is true; motorcycle accidents have a high rate of spinal and head injuries, and removing the helmet can cause further injury to the spinal column. However, in many cases, you don’t have the luxury of a choice: if someone stops breathing they have, at most, four minutes before they start suffering brain damage. They need CPR, which means the helmet has to come off – pronto.

      I quickly got on my radio to get some more help.

      ‘Mike Delta receiving?’

      ‘Go ahead.’

      ‘I need LAS on the hurry-up. IC1 male, aged around forty, has come off a motorbike. He’s not breathing or responding, but no obvious injuries. No other casualties.’

      ‘Received. LAS on the way. What’s his status?’

      ‘Not sure, we’re starting ELS²² now!’ I barked back and cut the line. A bit rude, perhaps, but I didn’t really have time for chit-chatting with the radio operator.

      An ambulance was on its way, which meant that we would only have to deal with this fellow on our own for about 15 minutes at most.

      Kim and I started the painfully slow process of taking his helmet off. We undid the chinstrap (which was a goddamn double-D clasp; great for motorcyclists, but a royal pain for rescue personnel). I stuck my hands into the helmet – one hand on each side of his neck, as far into the helmet as I could get – to steady his head. Kim, swearing under her breath, was gently rocking the helmet back and forth, to very carefully get it off him. All the while, the motorcyclist didn’t move a muscle.

      After what felt like an eternity, we finally managed to remove his helmet. Kim produced a CPR mask out of nowhere – I had no idea she carried one around with her – and started performing rescue breaths as I unzipped the motorcyclist’s jacket, ready to perform chest compressions.

      Once he had had his rescue breaths, I started the compressions. The first push gave a horrible crunching sound. Here’s something they don’t often tell you in the first aid course: if you’re doing CPR correctly, you’re more than likely to break their sternum and ribs in the process. The first time it happened to me, I was so surprised and sickened that I dry-heaved. I was lucky not to throw up all over my own arms and my victim, but to my credit I didn’t stop giving CPR.

      With this particular patient, we only made it through two cycles before the ambulance arrived. They had an AED²³ on them, and started hooking the man up right away.

      ‘Shock advised,’ the AED machine bleated out.

      ‘Stand clear,’ one of the paramedics said, glancing around quickly to make sure no one was touching the patient, before pressing the button on the AED.

      ‘Shock delivered,’ an unnaturally calm voice spoke from the AED machine.

      Almost immediately, our motorcyclist shot back to life. The change was rapid, and downright incredible. From the increasingly white colour he had had in the minutes since we’d found him, his face and lips turned instantly red, as he groaned and gasped for air.

      I too felt a rush of blood run to my ears, face and fingertips. It was almost as though my heart had decided to stop beating in sympathy with the motorcyclist’s.

      It is a rare thing to see someone brought back from the dead, and the feeling when it happens is indescribable.

      And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the reasons why I absolutely love my job.

      With the motorcyclist’s chances looking a little bit better, I let my mind wander back to the accident. I was puzzled about what may have happened to the motorcyclist: the road was clear and dry, the visibility was good, it was early afternoon so there wasn’t a lot of traffic around, and no one else appeared to have been involved. I looked at the bike, and other than the damage of the accident itself, I couldn’t really see anything obviously wrong with it.

      After hooking the man up to another one of their machines (I’m not a medic, so you’ll have to forgive the vague terms – it was a machine that went ‘beep’ a lot), one of the paramedics provided a solution to the mystery.

      ‘This guy has just had a heart attack,’ he said, looking at the readouts on the little display. ‘We’ll take him with us, he’s going to need to be looked after, but I think he’ll be fine.’

      As the paramedics loaded the motorcyclist into the back of their ambulance, the Traffic Police arrived to do an investigation. Traffic are usually called if there’s a risk a collision is ‘life changing or life threatening’. It didn’t take long before they concurred with my initial assessment: nothing was wrong with the road or the bike. There was no sign that he even tried to hit the brakes – he just tumbled off the side of the motorcycle at about 30mph.

      ‘Seems like the LAS guys were right,’ the traffic copper said. ‘Heart attack makes sense.’

      The man was conveyed to hospital at full speed. Later we discovered he had a broken shin, a gallery of bruises and his very own, very first heart attack, but he did walk (well, hobble) out a few days later.