Just Learned Mom Has a DNR

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CoffeeFanatic said:
CPR is brutal, does not guarantee one can be brought back, and it does break ribs. Best case, you’ll bring her back, but she’ll be in very bad shape with a worse quality of life than she started with before she coded. Worst case, your mother’s last moments of life will be brutal, painful, and not at all peaceful. Some people are coded multiple times. It’s a horrible way to go.
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Well said and I agree wholeheartedly!
 
CoffeeFanatic said:
CPR is brutal, does not guarantee one can be brought back, and it does break ribs. Best case, you’ll bring her back, but she’ll be in very bad shape with a worse quality of life than she started with before she coded. Worst case, your mother’s last moments of life will be brutal, painful, and not at all peaceful. Some people are coded multiple times. It’s a horrible way to go.
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Yes, yes it is. I have had to do CPR twice as an EMT (I mostly do transports). One was when I was a volunteer in NJ and my squad responded to a CPR in progress at a skilled nursing facility or SNF. When we got there, a cop was doing compressions and breathing with a bag-valve-mask. The same time we got there the paramedics showed up so they took control of the scene. The medics looked for signs of death even though we were told this started within the last 20 minutes. They found levidity. He was gone for a while. Our captain who was with us turned it into a chance to practice CPR (I was new then and had it been now I would have refused) so he started first. His second compression you heard ribs break. He continued until it was my turn. As I was doing them I realized that his sternum had cracked down the middle and his ribs were closing over my hands with each compression. So, that was my first CPR experience.

The second was almost three years ago. I was with my daughter in the lobby of a hospital and there was a man down. I had my daughter sit in a chair and said I would be right back. Went over to see what was going on as there was a crowd around him. They said, and this included a nurse, they think he is just resting. I asked the nurse to check his pulse and I will check for breathing. He didn’t have a pulse and wasn’t breathing. So I called out doing CPR. I started to do compressions and sure enough, ribs broke. Another nurse showed up and took over and I took over on breathing with the bag-valve-mask and someone got an AED. He ended up needing to be shocked and thankfully it was only once. He came out of it just as EMS showed up and started fighting back. Couldn’t blame him as he had no clue what was going on.

I said all this to impress on people that CPR is no joke.

So, when doing CPR, the saying is if you’re not breaking ribs you aren’t t doing it right!
 
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My husband recieved more than 50 shocks over the final 2 years of his life. Thing is, you don’t usually get just one. You get one after another after another. I still have nighmaries about watching him scream from the pain.
 
How is it that we have come to fear bodily death so much? Good grief, if it was so bad it would not happen. We are spiritual beings trapped inside these bodies yearning to be free and bodily death is not the end - it is just the beginning. Isn’t that a bit of what Jesus was trying to tell us?
 
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I’ve learned a lot on this thread. Fortunately, I have a living will. I don’t have a DNR because I’m only 63. But as my condition deteriorates, I will have one in place.
 
lonegreywolf20 said:
I can honestly say, that if a family pushes me as an EMT to work their loved one, I still wouldn’t do it when a DNR is in place.

The DNR is there for a reason and it is my job to honor the DNR per the patient’s wishes. The family can be screaming in my ear, threatening me with lawsuits, etc… I am bound by the DNR and my moral code to honor the patient’s wishes.
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whoops…misread the comment…I thought you were meaning you would ignore the DNR…sorry…:crazy_face:

When I was working as a Paramedic, a lot of the ER nurses, Doc’s and us medics would half joking say we wanted DNR tattooed across our chest.

I watched my beloved aunt and God Mother lay in a semi conscious state and basically they let her starve to death…it was brutal…it’s at those times you wish for a DNR with the provision to triple up on the morphine drip…
 
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Odilon said:
We are spiritual beings trapped inside these bodies yearning to be free
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We are bodies and souls, yearning for the time when our glorified bodies will walk in the new heaven and new earth!
 
TheLittleLady said:
My husband recieved more than 50 shocks over the final 2 years of his life. Thing is, you don’t usually get just one. You get one after another after another. I still have nighmaries about watching him scream from the pain.
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I don’t believe a person is supposed to be shocked unless they are not breathing and have no pulse.
So I can obviously see how someone in this situation of your husbands would be against it b/c that is a lot of episodes.

My whole point was that people in this thread are making CPR and defib seem like it is evil when in fact is saves thousands if not millions of lifes a year. It can be brutal to a body and sometimes that brutality is not worth it, but in many cases, the effects of the treatments pail in comparison to death
 
CatholicSooner said:
I don’t believe a person is supposed to be shocked unless they are not breathing and have no pulse.
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Defibulation is used when a heart rhythm is dangerous, such as when a person is in Vtach. They can be very much alert, breathing, and pulsatile.
 
TheLittleLady said:
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CatholicSooner:
I don’t believe a person is supposed to be shocked unless they are not breathing and have no pulse.
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Defibulation is used when a heart rhythm is dangerous, such as when a person is in Vtach. They can be very much alert, breathing, and pulsatile.
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From my training, it should not be done when they are conscious.
 
whatistrue said:
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CatholicSooner:
I don’t believe a person is supposed to be shocked unless they are not breathing and have no pulse.
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That may be what you see in the movies and on TV. TV is not reality.
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I misspoke on the no pulse part. There are certain rhythms that require it but some that shocking will do no good. But my training has taught that it should not be done when a person is conscious
 
Sometimes what happens in training and what happens in real life are two very different things.

One of my first lessons from a paramedic when doing my ride time was, you learned the book way, which is good and has it’s place, but now you’re gonna learn the real way and the way it is done outside of the class room.

When a person is paced with pacer pads, they are getting shocks from the defibrillator to control their heart rhythm. That person can indeed be very much conscious.
 
lonegreywolf20 said:
Sometimes what happens in training and what happens in real life are two very different things.

One of my first lessons from a paramedic when doing my ride time was, you learned the book way, which is good and has it’s place, but now you’re gonna learn the real way and the way it is done outside of the class room.

When a person is paced with pacer pads, they are getting shocks from the defibrillator to control their heart rhythm. That person can indeed be very much conscious.
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Well, my instructor is a very well respected Firefighter and EMSA. Maybe somebody do it but it shouldnt be done. I trust him on that. It could do more harm than good b/c of the anxiety of getting shocked.
 
Do you know what pacer pads are?
 
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lonegreywolf20 said:
Do you know what pacer pads are?
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No idea.

The more I thiunk about it though, He made it sound like a person should never be shocked while conscious but maybe he meant that WE shouldn’t do it bc we weren’t medical personnel.
 
I’m assuming by pacer pads you mean the pads on a defib unit
 
CatholicSooner said:
WE shouldn’t do it bc we weren’t medical personnel.
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That very well could have been it.

I was looking at the contraindications for subcutaneously pacing someone with pacer pads and not one said conscious patient.

Also, an internal pacemaker does exactly what a subcutaneous pacer does. The patient is conscious and when it detects a dysrhythmia it’s job is to shock the electrical system back into a normal sinus rhythm.
 
Correct. When used with a Lifepak, Zoll, or Phillips cardiac monitor and are being used to pace someone’s heart rhythm, we call them pacer pads.
 
CatholicSooner said:
My whole point was that people in this thread are making CPR and defib seem like it is evil when in fact is saves thousands if not millions of lifes a year.
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Im an ICU nurse. Its not that CPR and defribrillation is an evil. But, I do think that it is an injustice to do it on people who have expressly stated that they do not want it.

Broken ribs lead to pneumothorax’s and chest tubes. Which are extremely painful.
When someone has a pulse after cpr, it does not mean that they are out of danger by any means. They may still be in shock whick means that they probably will need to be started on high dosages of vasoprssors to perfuse their core organs and brain. These types of medications can lead to lack of blood flow to your limbs, and I have indeed seen people need to have portions of their hands and feet amputated from these drugs.
 
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