What Does CPR mean to you?
The following is the essay I wrote for the CPR event of the Mostlandian Championships of 2007. It won first place.
Why I Hate CPR
CPR has a very real and intense meaning to me. I first learned to give CPR when I lived in Coldfoot, Alaska, which is 60 miles north of the arctic circle. My dad was a state trooper and my mom, being a former nurse, started C.A.R.E.S., the Coldfoot Area Emergency Rescue Squad. This was the only ambulance service for basically the top half of the giant state of Alaska.So anyway, I was in the 4th grade and since the CPR classes happened at our house I would join in. I learned CPR by half paying attention to the class over and over and over. It got to the point where I figured that I knew CPR.
I was wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.
<< | Posted by kmikeym at 11:07 AM | >>
Um, is there more to this essay?
Brilliant. You learn something so potentially important yet so rarely used that you probably pay less attention than if it was something really trivial that you use all the time. Isn't that some kind of business/economics idea?
There is no more. The details are too ugly and too painful.
Yeah, maybe if I had been taught some sort of small daily safety practice the whole terrible incident would never have occurred! Something like, "Driving Fast and Climbing On The Roof of a Car Don't Mesh Well". Just tell yourself that everyday!
Did you know that in some european countries they teach a different style of CPR that involves chest compressions only and no rescue breaths? They realized that because no-one wants to put their mouth on the dirty, germ-ridden, vomit-filled mouth of a stranger that no-one was actually giving CPR. Plus nobody could remember the ratio of breaths to compressions anyway. I think we should adopt that here.
Please, don't be so hard on yourself. I carried the hurt of thinking what I did wasn't enough for more than a year before I realized that I had done everything I could, with a caring, loving heart but it was his time.
http://forwardho.blogspot.com/2006/02/anytime-hes-gone-away.html
You cared enough to try, a heart that cares for others is precious.