Struggling with Fate

[rowyn]

I've been duking it out with Prophecy all week. I've been slogging determinedly forward, trying to force my way through the current scene, but it's not gone well. I've got a ton of notes on angles to try, things to use, tacks to take, etc., ad nauseum, but I still find myself staring at the current chapter and going, "Bleh."

I am very tempted to skip this one and move on to the next. I'm not quite sure why I don't. True, some of the coming scenes will hinge on what I ultimately do with this one. But there's still a fair bit of material that won't be significantly impacted by the details of this particular chapter.

Maybe the problem is that I don't really want to do any of those, either.

And as Saturdays go, this one wasn't as lazy as I would've liked. I went to a class on CPR today, and I now have a little white card saying that I know how to perform CPR.

And please, oh Lord, let this knowledge never come in handy.

At one point, the instructor is explaining where to put your hands when doing CPR, so as to minimize the risk of breaking ribs. "If you hear a loud snap, locate the notch of the breastbone again, shift the position of your hands, and try again. If you hear another snap, again, reposition your hands, and try again."

Ouch.

Of course, CPR is, in essence, what you do to dead people. If you are performing CPR on someone, it's because they have no pulse and are about to go from "mostly dead" to "all-the-way-dead."

Still.

Boy, I hope I never need to know this stuff.

Comments

[oceansedge.livejournal.com]

Interesting, just did my CPR course today as well. The gentleman teaching the class is an EMS Paramedic.... people were a bit surprised, he pulled no punches and gave us a fair bit of information that isn't standardly included in the Red Cross syllabus. Some of it a bit disturbing, but his tack on it was "better you know NOW, then for me to feed you the 'standard line', and have you freak out later that maybe you did something wrong"

About broken ribs.... in all his years as a paramedic, he's only personally know of 3 cases where CPR did not break ribs, one was a baby (more flexible bones), and 2 were great big football player types.

The other thing, was to tell us that less than 1% of all CPR recipients ever survive.. but "remember, you're doing this BECAUSE the person is DEAD. You can't make it any worse, you can only make it better, and less than 1% chance is better than NO chance which is what they have if you do nothing." Of course one also has to figure in the circumstances, in terms of the actually likelihood it'll help.

They used to have a TV ad on here in Canada encouraging people to take First Aid and CPR courses, that was a dramatization of a 12 yr old girl saving her grandpa with CPR, they were forced to pull the ad as false advertising. And a good thing too imo, (and his). He's seen people get entirely hysterical and freaked out when it hasn't helped, presuming they've done something wrong and killed the person, because they were taught to believe that 'CPR will save their lives'.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I recall one dramatic presentatation of CPR on screen, in the movie "The Abyss". At least in the movies, it doesn't always work. It depends on how important the character is, perhaps.

May both of you never need to apply this. But if the occasion arises, I would take comfort in having my ribs broken by such nice people.

Sorry about your writing snag, Lady Rowyn. I'm confident that your ultimate result will be quite satisfactory -- but getting there is not easy sometimes.

===|==============/ Level Head

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

The a priori chance of success of CPR in ICU is 15%. I would presume this is "ideal conditions".

I found this out post-mortem. Back when I was doing my 40 days and 40 nights in ICU, it appears that I went "Code Blue" (and was revived by CPR) twice.