Not pretty, so necessary, easy when you know how.

Unsurprisingly, on my course we have mandatory basic life support training. Fair enough. I mean, if someone needed CPR in a hospital and no nurses could do it we would have a bit of a problem, wouldn’t we. It doesn’t stop me groaning every time I see it on the timetable, or trying to work out if ‘a tiger broke in to my house and ate my timetable’ would pass as a valid excuse to stay in bed and miss it.

 

That is, until Monday.

 

So let’s give you a bit of background here, travelling back from Devon to Birmingham is never a short journey. I don’t even like trains. Not one little bit. Truth be told, little bit terrified of them. Judge me all you want. But knowing that the roads would be chaos, my housemate would be travelling with me and the only seat on the MegaBus would be next to the guy who hasn’t washed in 3 weeks persuaded me to bite the bullet and buy a train ticket. Exmouth to Exeter, Exeter to Birmingham. The journey started with me missing my first train, in true Sarah style I legged it across the road, bags flying all over the place to find a smug woman telling me that despite the train still being in the station, I couldn’t get on it. Fine. 

 

It was a long journey, one of those ones where you just wish you could apparate, damn you JK Rowling for introducing me to something that I can’t do in the muggle world. But eventually we arrive at new street station. Excited to get outside and have a cigarette I practically gallop through the station, not taking in to consideration the old woman who had a near miss when she stood in my path. About to light up and I see two guys staring in to a lift. I’m not even going to hide it to you guys, I am nosey, like ridiculously nosey, so I wandered over and explained that I have my first aid qualifications and I’m a student nurse, is there anything I could do to help? I was not ready for the events that were about to unfold. 

 

Man, in lift, unresponsive.

 

Danger. Response. Shout for help. Airway. Breathing. Circulation.

 

Nothing.

 

Not even one little pulse. Or a tiny breath. No pink cheeks but a grey tinge. Nothing like casualty or holby city or greys anatomy.

 

3 rounds of compressions. Defibrillator thrown at me. Adrenaline pumping. 3 ambulances. 5 paramedics. Police. Station staff. Pedestrians wanting a good look.

 

Its funny, you can go through it a million times, I mean, I help train people to know how to do this, I’m training to be a nurse, but there is always that little bit of you that feels you might not be able to do it if you were faced with that situation. 

 

Trust me on this one, you can.

 

Something in you brings back everything you know, everything you were taught in your emergency first aid course or at brownies. Every bit of advice you have been given that you stuck in the back of your head because what you are really thinking is when will I ever even need this?

 

Do me a favour; think back to when you last watched casualty, or greys anatomy, or holby city. Can you remember? Good. Now rack your brains to think about a patient who needed CPR, being bought in on a trolley with doctors, nurses and paramedics yelling medical jargon all around them. The patient (who more often than not is looking incredibly healthy) is found to have no pulse, CPR is commenced.

 

Now have a really good think for me, imagine what that medical professional on your TV looks like.

 

Not even breaking a sweat?

 

Pushing down less than a cm on the patient’s chest?

 

In a calm, quiet environment with nobody peering through the windows?

 

Exciting? Yes. Beautifully presented? Yes. Accurate? No.

 

If you really think about it, CPR is not pretty. It is not glamorous. It does not only last for 2 minutes then the patient sits up and thanks everybody for their help and could they please get a cup of tea. 

 

It is brutal.

 

It is ribs cracking underneath your hands.

 

It is confined spaces with awkward angles, because believe it or not the patient doesn’t often lie flat on their back with plenty of space and no danger around

 

It is sweaty

 

It is fast paced

 

And nothing can prepare you for the feeling that you could be breaking someone’s ribs. Nobody can tell you about the rush of emotions you will feel afterwards, pride, happiness, guilt, fear. You want to cry and laugh at the same time. 

 

But listen to this, you can save somebody’s life, and when you are actually in the situation, there is so much adrenaline pumping round your body that you don’t even think about it, you just do it. Everything around you slows down and you focus. You focus on getting that heart pumping. Everything inside of you wants that family to get a phone call saying ‘although he needed CPR, it was given at the scene and he is now stable’. You want them to live.

 

And it doesn’t bear thinking about what you would do if it was your family member or friend. But take this moment to think about it, would you want people to know what to do if it was your loved one who collapsed? Knowing basic first aid is a vital skill that I personally believe that every single person should know.

 

Some statistics show that in the UK, fewer than one in five people who suffer from a survivable cardiac arrest receive the life saving aid that they need from people nearby. Less than one in five. Isn’t that appalling? 

 

If you are reading this and you don’t have first aid training, why not? You could save someone’s life. I don’t know what happened after the ambulance took that guy away the other day; I have no idea whether he lived or died. But you know what, I know first aid, I have been taught how to do CPR, and thanks to that I was able to give him a fighting chance. I don’t think I will ever find out the outcome, but the opportunity was there to give someone back their granddad, dad, son, friend. 

 

And no, it’s not pretty. It’s not something you ever want to do.

 

So do me a favour, contact your local first aid provider, Action for Life (07511623924) or myself, and learn, in the words of the fray, how to save a life.

 

Because it's easy when you know how.

Thank you.