[WARNING: If you click this video you may hum a song the rest of the day. If that helps you remember the appropriate pace for CPR chest compressions, it’s worth a little earworm.]
Six months after my cardiac arrest and resuscitation, I was back in the hospital with breathing problems. I feared it was COVID. When the diagnosis turned out to be pulmonary embolism, I was strangely relieved, not knowing it would take a year to clear.
Before I left the hospital I had a teachable moment with the internist who treated me. I’ll call him Dr. N. He was a slender man in monotone hospital scrubs and a brilliantly-colored turban. I think he was a Sikh.
Dr. N began morning rounds the traditional way. “How do you feel?”
“Good! I just took a stroll around the ward on the arm of a pretty young occupational therapist.”
“I saw that. I didn’t want to interrupt.” He listened to my lungs and checked the IV site where a heparin line was pulled an hour earlier. “We worked out other medications. You can go home today with a rew restrictions. You will heal better there.
I interrupted him. “My son is on his way over here. I’d like him to hear your instructions.”
“I called him while you had your walk,” Dr. N said. “He knows what to do. You’re in good hands.”
Indeed. That’s when I told him how Brendan performed CPR on me.
“So he had the training?”
“He had BLS. And the 911 dispatcher stayed on the phone to coach him through the pacing.”
“Broken ribs?”
“No. Severely bruised.”
“Clearly, he got it right.”
Dr. N paused, then he beamed. “You know how we learned CPR when I was in medical school? We learned that Bee Gees song, ‘Staying Alive’.”
Dr. N spun around slowly like a Sufi, singing “Ah- ha- ha- ha- Staying-Alive- Staying-Alive”. As he spun around he thrust his arms and crossed hands downward, making emphatic chest compressions in the air.
Had someone been there to shoot a TikTok video, it would deserve to have a million views. I repeated his words and moves to get the beat.
“Faster,” he urged. We sang it together. “Ah- ha- ha- ha- Staying-Alive- Staying-Alive.”
Dr. N approved. “That’s it. Keep that pace.”
“I will,” I vowed, “if I ever need to pay it forward.”
![Sandhill cranes land on Platte River sandbar roosts west of Rowe Sanctuary’s Iain Nicolson Audubon Center southwest of Gibbon, Nebraska. [Photo by Lori Porter| Kearney Hub]](https://www.ghostturtles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/sandhill_cranes_kearneyhub_032015-300x225.jpg)
![An endangered Whooping crane takes flight. Yhe large bird has a 7-foot wingspan. It is all white except for black wing tips and face markings. In this photo its long neck stretches forward; its wings sweep upward; and its black legs trail straight behind it. [Source: International Crane Foundation]](https://www.ghostturtles.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Whooping-crane-eastern-ICF-080622-300x157.jpg)
![Mark Willis peruses a 1745 volume by Voltaire at a bouquiniste book stall on the banks of the Seine in Paris. He wears a brown leather jacket and checkered flat cap. He holds the open book in his hands. Rows of old books are seen on shelves behind him. [2005 photo by Ms. Modigliani]](https://www.ghostturtles.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/mw_bouquiniste_05-300x225.jpg)
