first cardiac arrest bleep

today was my first day carrying the cart (cardiac arrest resuscitation team) pager.
usually, a whole week goes by with nary a bleep, because the mortality in surgical units is much less than in medical units and cart, at least here, is only for the surgical units. the medical wards handle their own arrests.
and what i feared came true. was sleeping when the bleep came, actually was just waking up.
obviously, grossly inadequately dressed to go anywhere.
so i hurried into my clothes, and in the hurry-worry, forget to look carefully at the pager.
they had written the location as usual, but i saw only the phone number. so wasted precious seconds calling them up and finding out where they were.
anyway, the team also includes people from the i.c.u., so they're right below the surgical wards and reach immediately.
they'd already started resuscitation when i reached. thankfully, we performed well i think.
obviously wasn't my first resus. you can't go through a whole year of internship here without seeing more deaths than you can keep track of.
this guy had metastatic high-grade sarcoma and had just been admitted for pain-control. the surgical guys said they didn't expect him to die so soon, so they did not put a dnr (do not resuscitate) order on the chart.
interestingly, we resus'ed for about 15 minutes and throughout, whenever we checked, there was no pulse. but once we decided to stop and checked one last time, we found he had a pulse!
i wanted to ventilate him because he was at least pumping blood now, but the surgery guys were right. they were not going to do anything, and would not be putting him on supports anyway. they would just explain to the relatives and advise that it would be less traumatic for all concerned if the patient was taken home. he never did have a hope anyway, the cancer was too widespread.
once that was decided, we just took off our gloves, and left.
it's strange. having so many deaths happen in your watch in internship kinda kills you off inside too.
well, i don't mean the heartless, soul-less doctor thing that everyone talks about.
but you get so clinical about these things
nothing elicits a flicker of feeling or a second thought anymore.
maybe I'll post later on how this emotion-less thing works
bye