C.P.R—WHAT ABOUT ME?

by Ron Dowle

If you have done a CPR course you probably left the course thinking that it had made you a more useful member of the community, and perhaps gave yourself a small pat on the back.

Then, on the way home, maybe you thought: What about me? If someone has a heart attack and I'm around then I now know how I can help; but what if I have the heart attack? Will there be someone around who knows what to do to help me?

Here is some advice on what you can do to help yourself. It comes from a newsletter Health Cares produced by the Rochester General Hospital, New York.

Let's say it's 6:15 p.m. and you're driving home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day on the job. You're really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw.

You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home, unfortunately you don't know if you'll be able to make it that far. What can you do? You've been trained in CPR but the guy that taught the course neglected to tell you how to perform it on yourself.

How to survive a heart attack when alone.

Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, this article seemed in order.

Without help, the person whose heart stops beating properly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness.

Start by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds again without letting up until help arrives, or until the heart is beating normally.

Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital.