NEW YORK OBSERVED

The Man in the Blue Pajamas

By JEN UMLAS

MarTina Powell 1st period

Published: May 4, 2008 MY parents were volunteer emergency medical technicians for two

decades, so I expected I would be great at the job. I certainly had parental support. When I mentioned to my mom in 1996 that I was thinking of becoming an E.M.T., she all but picked me up and carried me into the training hall, right down the block from our house on Eaton Court in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn. I imagined that I would be like my mother, a technically competent E.M.T. who also was not afraid to get dirty and had a knack for providing psychological first aid. Instead, I took after my father, who looked like Super Mario and got almost perfect test scores but was not so great with actual patients. Still, I had a good stretcher-side manner and I could splint and bandage as well as anyone. I loved walking onto an accident scene and knowing exactly what I was supposed to do. I felt like Dr. Cameron, the compassionate immunologist on House. Gerritsen Beach is a tiny corner of southern Brooklyn, and our unit, the Gerritsen Beach Volunteer Fire Department and Ambulance Service, had only one ambulance. If a call came in when the ambulance was already out and more than five minutes away, the dispatcher called 911 and we reported to the scene in the rescue truck, treated the patient, and then signed the patient over to the city E.M.T.s when they arrived. Thats what happened one day in the late 1990s with John, a 75-year-old who was lying on the couch of his home in his pajamas, light blue as I remember, when we arrived. He reminded me of the men in my Grandpa Toms bridge club, all gray hair and thick glasses and hearty laughs. He had been having chest pains, and as it turned out, he had undergone bypass surgery less than a week before. The officer of my crew herded Johns relatives into the dining room to give us privacy. Our driver helped me take Johns vital signs. His blood pressure was low, but acceptable, his breaths were coming often enough, and his pulse was fine. We gave him oxygen and I smiled reassuringly to let him know that this kid in jeans and a sweatshirt Im short and blond, and was in my mid-20s was capable of taking care of him. He closed his eyes to rest while we waited for the ambulance. I was eager to have John on his way to the emergency room at Coney Island Hospital, less than 10 minutes away. I knelt beside him, keeping my fingers on his wrist, constantly feeling his pulse. That beat meant that things were basically O.K., that there was nothing to do but wait. Then, however, as I looked at his face through the oxygen mask, it seemed as if John wasnt breathing regularly. I asked our driver to take a look. When a persons breathing becomes inadequate, his pulse soon weakens, but because Johns pulse was strong, I was not sure what was going on. Because Id been an E.M.T. for only two years and went on a few calls a week instead of a few a day, I hadnt built up much experience. The driver, who was about my age, was even greener than I was and had somewhat less medical training. The officer had 15 years on us, but she was dealing with the family.

The driver moved the patients mask aside and called his name loudly. John took a deep, gasping breath. Relieved that he was at least breathing, we relaxed a bit. After another minute, the city ambulance pulled up outside and a clean-cut, uniformed E.M.T. appeared behind me. Hes taking a few gasping breaths a minute, but his pulse is good, I said, trying to sound confident. The man exchanged a look with his partner. The two city E.M.T.s had John moved to the floor in case we needed to perform CPR, and then attached their defibrillator to his chest. I moved my hands away because I knew that anyone touching a patient would have his or her pulse appear on the monitor, too. But the partner waved me back toward the patient. I put my hand back on Johns wrist and, when I looked at the monitor, I immediately knew why I had been motioned back. There was only one pulse. Mine. Johns heart had stopped sometime in the last few minutes and I had done nothing because Id thought that my heartbeat was his. WHEN Johns pulse was beating, the pulse in my fingertip was weaker than the one at his wrist. So when I took his pulse, I felt the beat in his wrist instead of the one in my own finger. But when John had no pulse, I could still feel a thump against my fingertips. People with thick skin could tell the difference easily. The rest of us had to learn. The E.M.T.s had me start CPR. If I had started it sooner, I thought to myself, John would have had a better chance. Also, he was swollen from the surgery a few days earlier, and his chest, covered in stitches, felt like foam rubber. Soon, still hoping, we were speeding with John in the ambulance toward the hospital. Later that night, I told my mother about confusing my pulse and Johns. She said I wasnt the first person to make that mistake. She was offering me absolution, but I didnt think I deserved it. The next day, Johns family called to let us know that he had died. I wasnt surprised. In my first class, one of the students had asked the instructor: What if we kill someone? You cant kill a patient, the instructor had replied. We werent doctors or even paramedics. There was no danger of our giving someone the wrong drug or making some other potentially fatal mistake. You can only fail to save them, the instructor said.

Summary This girls parents were both E.M.T.S, and she always knew she would become one to. She thought she would be like her mom and be good with the patients, but she ended up like her dad and was good with the book work and not with the patients. After a while she started to get the hang of things. One day she was called to and house because an old man was having chest pains (*which were a key symptoms for an heart attack Ms. Walton*) and had bypass surgery last week. Relatives were cleared for privacy for the old man and the doctor. The man had low blood pressure and they gave him oxygen, his pulse was fine at that moment. Well she kept checking his pulse

on his wrist and it seemed fine. When she looked at his face it looked as if his was breathing irregularly, but his pulse was still strong. She wasnt very experienced and didnt know what to do in this kind of situation. They moved the gas mask and called his name very loud and he took a deep gasping breath. The citys ambulance arrived and checked on the old man. It turns out the pulse the lady was feeling was her own and he didnt have a pulse for several minutes. The ambulance man instructed her to perform CPR until they arrived at the hospital. When they got to the hospital the old man had died. She remembered when her instructor said , We cant kill anybody but we can fail to save them.