CPR

I have had to do CPR on many occasions. The majority of the time it has been either in the hospital setting or in an EMS setting. However, the one that I remember the most actually happened too close to home. I was at home taking care of my two children at the time when one of our neighbor's son came running over to the house. He came running up saying that he did not think that his mother was breathing. I yelled to my daughter to stay in the house and keep her brother in the house, and ran to my neighbors house. When I entered the house I immediately started calling out to my neighbor and she was unresponsive in the middle of the room. I quickly pulled her down to the floor and opened her airway. She was not breathing and I could not find a pulse. I immediately told the son to call 911. I then began CPR. I did not think twice about it. I made sure that the dispatchers could hear that cpr was in progress in the hopes of having initial responders move as quickly as possible. (Hey five minutes can be a long time when doing one rescuer cpr.) I was fortunate that by the time that the first police officer arrived I had re-established a pulse and she was starting to breath on her own. I still worked to protect her airway because she was unable to do this on her own. I then turned over care to the EMS providers who transported her to the local hospital.