Resuscitation

Richard Bell's Wild West Yorkshire Nature Diary, Saturday, 17th July 2010

sketchbook

door, resucitationWE DIDN'T hesitate to dash up there straight away when Barbara's mum phoned us at 10 pm., complaining the the room was spinning. She'd suffered a heart attack so we were soon following the ambulance to Pinderfields accident & emergency department. Once we'd completed the initial formalities and tests we were in for a long night so, as I always do in emergencies, I started sketching. The doctor was quite impressed as he said that he couldn't draw. Later one of the nurses recalled the time that she'd been given a detention at school for what the teacher saw as a complete lack of effort in her art homework, but she claims that she can draw only stick-men.

The Final Curtain

mugs, resuscitationBarbara's mum's attitude in an emergency is different; while the drama unfolded around her she was propped up on a trolley/bed with the curtains of the booth in front of her and she started talking – not too intelligibly by this stage – about some alterations she wanted to make to her curtains at home. I like her down-to-earth approach to a matter of life and death.

She told us that when the attack first started she turned on the television and tried watching Casualty, hoping it would take her mind off the pain!

"I'm used to seeing people wired up like this in Casualty," she remarked, "now it's happened to me!"

Things took a turn for the worse as the hours passed by, so they transferred her to resuscitation. It wasn't until the time we'd normally be getting up that she was fully stabilised and on her way to the high dependency ward. As the crisis was over, we took the opportunity to leave her in the capable hands of the hospital staff and went home to sleep until lunch time.

She was soon doing a lot better - sitting up and eating breakfast by 9 am. - and by the Monday morning she'd been transferred to a general ward.