Learn something new, you never know when it may be useful.
Helping had no boundaries at this job as Mirage Resorts required that one person in each department be trained in dealing with emergency health situations including certified in CPR and how to use a defibrillator device. I will give you one guess who signed up for this. I mean why not. Something new and you never know when this training may be useful in my lifetime. What I did not consider is that ninety percent of everyone in my department was on their second retirement and the likelihood of me having to use this training was a 50/50 chance every day I walked through the door.
It was a day like every other day, grumpy old men telling their stories from their days of serving our country in law enforcement and military deployment. Until numerous people started screaming my name as one of our own went down. My training taught me well because I did not blink an eye. I quickly went into action clearing the area where my patient was lying, informing a co-worker to call 911 as it was immediately clear to me that this was a serious situation. I assessed the situation and determined my patient was not breathing and I had to clear the airway and begin CPR. I asked quickly if he had a heart condition and many replied yes. I immediately ran to get the defibrillator as I feared he had a heart attack and may require additional medical attention beyond the CPR I was performing. I instructed two people to continue CPR. I quickly returned and applied the defibrillator. The defibrillator indicated his heart was beating regularly. It was at this point that my medical training came to an end, as I was no nurse or doctor. I instructed them to call 911 again as it felt like hours had gone by. They were indeed lost as they went to the Mirage, and not the Mirage corporate office that was offsite from the casino. They finally arrived and took over. I was exhausted after performing CPR for nearly 30 minutes with zero response from Jack. My training told me to keep going, so I did. I gave the paramedics as much information as possible given my limited knowledge. As Jack continued to lay lifeless, the paramedics packed him up and they were off.
“My training told me to keep going, so I did.”
It was hours later that we received the call that Jack had died. It was many more days later when the on-staff doctor of Mirage Resorts requested my presence in Human Resources. Frankly, this was a scarier experience than the incident itself. They wanted to discuss the incident and go over the recording from the defibrillator. I forgot that the defibrillator was recording the incident. It was awful to have to listen to the recording as Jack took his last breath and I am not sure of the reasoning behind this torture. Keep in mind, I was 20 years old and just experienced a traumatic death of a co-worker. It was at that moment that I lost it as I stood up and asked why I was there and why they felt the need to put me through this. Did they feel I killed him? The thought crossed my mind. If anything would have killed him it was the fact that they had the location of the defibrillator in another department locked in a room, which is not what they told us in our training would be the case. After speaking my mind, I departed the situation and prepared a memo that I would no longer be the responsible party for medical attention in the future and that medical personnel should be that of the responsibility of the company and not the employees.
Prior to the military funeral, the wife of Jack requested to speak with me when she was informed that I performed CPR on her husband for 30 minutes prior to the paramedics arriving. She informed me of the autopsy of Jack that concluded he died from a brain aneurism and there was nothing I could have done to change the ultimate outcome. This conversation with her brought closure to me. When the military guns fired, I lost it. The nightmare was over, and I had to move on knowing that the medical profession was not something I was cut out for.