“Notification!” Brenda shouted as she hung up the red phone. “Eighty-year-old, altered mental status, no palpable blood pressure. Three minutes out.”
While nurses gathered IV equipment and an EKG machine, two paramedics rolled in a stretcher bearing a small, moaning, barely conscious Asian woman.
“Couldn’t get a blood pressure,” the chief medic said, panting. “Pulse 30 on arrival.” That meant her ventricle had stopped responding to her pacemaker, so they jolted her heart with a shot of atropine, which bumped her heart rate to 60.
"Her medical history is renal failure, dialysis three times a week, hypertension, and a history of stroke,” the medic added. “Son says she woke up confused, saying her legs hurt. Couldn’t walk. Fine the night before. We gave her D-50 [a glucose solution that reverses hypoglycemia]. Didn’t help.”
Thin and wiry, Mrs. Chee looked awful. Brenda hooked her up to the EKG machine. Out came ...
