If CPR Can't Help...

I made a Facebook Post last night about a car crash that we came upon on the way home from hockey. It was serious and the news reported 1 person with life threatening injuries.  We heard later that this person passed away. A friend contacted me later after reading the post. She was at the scene and started CPR on the driver. We chatted a bit about the incident, her response and what she was feeling, and then in the morning she sent me a note that the person didn’t make it.

What I wanted to talk about here is the aftermath of any attempt to save a person’s life and the physiological and psychological or emotional impacts. This is partly for her and most of it is what she and I discussed, but I hope you all take something away from this.

Just for transparency, I’m not a doctor or a first responder, but I’ve been in similar situations and this is from my own personal experience.

What many people don't know is that CPR by itself isn’t really able to bring a person back. It's not like we see on TV shows. I believe that from the research I have read, performing CPR alone has been able to resuscitate a person less than 2% of the time. 

CPR stands for Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation and it is really not intended to resuscitate or bring back a patient at all. It’s really to keep the blood circulating to give that person a chance to get more advanced critical care that a paramedic or a medical facility can provide. Its purpose simply is to continue to circulate the patient’s blood to provide oxygen to the brain to give them a fighting chance, but it’s still a slim chance as it only provides about 25% of the oxygen that the brain needs to survive, so the longer it needs to be done, the slimmer the chance. I don’t know what the actually “success” rate is but I’ve heard numbers of between 10-25% percent based on whatever research paper you read. Suffice it to say, it’s not high.

So the goal of CPR is not to actually resuscitate the person, but to keep the blood circulating long enough that someone else with more advanced skills and equipment can take over with say something like a defibrillator which can possibly shock a heart back into a rhythm.

So you can see, the chances aren't great but given the zero possibility of surviving without CPR, any chance you get to keep that blood circulating should be taken. So now let’s talk about what happens to YOU if in the end, the person didn’t make it.

First, the immediate after effects are all caused by adrenaline. It’s not normal, it’s not an everyday event, and it’s definitely not natural to be doing chest compressions on someone. It’s not a day-to-day thing to have someone’s life in your hands, so yes, there is an extreme flow of adrenaline going. First Responders get the adrenaline rush too but not to the level of the layperson with zero experience. This adrenaline rush will hit you hard but not as hard as when the adrenaline stops. You will crash and crash bigtime. You will feel drained, your emotions will be all over the map, and your brain will be asking all kinds of questions. If the paramedics took the patient away, you’re wondering if the person made it, you’re wondering if you did everything right or if you did anything wrong, and even if you could have done anything else. I’ll tell you now, you will never, ever know the answers to all of these questions other than, did they live or die.

Second, after you’ve rehashed everything with the police and they let you go home, you should get someone to drive you. You’re probably not ready to drive yourself yet, and your mind is still coming down from the adrenaline. That night you will probably have trouble sleeping until you do what I call an adrenaline crash. Your body and mind are so exhausted you just crash, and when you wake up in the morning you may either be wide awake or utterly physically and/or emotionally exhausted. I’ll bet on the latter.

Third, assuming you hear the person didn’t make it, then the questions start all over again, did I do everything I could? Did I miss anything? Could I have done more? You will feel sadness because someone died. You may feel anger towards who or what caused the incident. If it was a child or member of your family, well then we’re going to a whole other level.

In the end, there will be lots of questions and very few answers for you, and there’s not a lot of help out there for you if you need it. You may need to go speak to someone, a professional for instance, or you may need to just open up to a family member or a friend, but what I’m going to say here is what my experience has been. It’s not everyone that ends up in a situation where they may have to try to help save a life, and I use the word TRY. That person may be already dead. But if you’re trained, you have the opportunity to give that person a fighting chance IF THEY HAVE ONE. Massive injuries, full on strokes, unrecoverable heart attacks, aneurysms, and other medical conditions all start the process of requiring CPR. All you can do is try to keep the blood flowing until help arrives, that’s all you can do. It’s not a win or lose thing. The odds are against you but you’re not there to play the odds, you’re there to give them some extra time so that medical help can arrive and take over.

And if the person doesn’t make it, then please understand you gave it your best shot. There’s nothing more you could do so don’t drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what you could’ve done to make things different because there’s probably nothing. A significant number of people who die receive no immediate CPR at all, so even if you did something “wrong”, the fact that you tried at all gave them a better chance to come back than doing nothing at all. You tried to help give the person extra time. In most cases, you alone cannot save a life, but you can help give them time so that others can and sometimes, it works out.

Finally from a long term perspective, you may feel different about things after. You may feel depressed, certain things may trigger some negative feelings related to the incident. You need to identify these feelings or what I call “events” and seek some help, no matter how small or insignificant it may be. Remember, there’s always someone to talk to if you need to talk.

If you need help or even just a chance to chat, you can look up your local Victim Services organization. In Peel Region you can find them at https://vspeel.org/ and in Toronto at https://victimservicestoronto.com/

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Note: The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of any other person, organization, or current or former employer.