I am the cure for Cardiac Arrest

On Tuesday evening my wife and I took a CPR class with an emphasis on infant and child resuscitation, safety prep work for our upcoming bundle of joy.  By the way, that bundle of joy is only 5+ weeks away!  AH!!! :)

So anyway, we're at the class with one other expecting couple, they're dry and lumpy along with a Caribbean woman who appears festive and very rotund.  The instructor, a middle aged woman, starts the video and class is under way.  The video starts out in a gym setting, a spry female Asian trainer is working and joking with a client.  "I'm going to have to add some extra crunches Jamal! (laughter).

The anticipation in me is building, oh man something is about to go wrong, I can feel it!  Is Jamal going to drop down right in the middle of this conversation?!?!?!?  What facial contorsion does this actor feel will best convey his heart stopping?!?!?!?!   The suspense of the immediate panic and confusion is killing me!

And then......

All of a sudden.....

The camera cuts to an over weight white guy struggling on a weight bench... I think, holy shit, this is it, here it comes.

The trainer seeing him struggling goes over to ask him how he is, some conversation and then he's out... cardiac arrest.  If you don't know already or can't tell, the situational sections of the instructional video are incredible, seriously, they're awesome.

So then we get to actually do some compression and "da breathes" as it's later called in one such video scenario, to some "CPR dummies".  There are 3 such dummies lined up on the floor, the instructor says let's have the two dads go first and she includes the large Caribbean woman.  She's a nanny as we found out later, so let's refer to her as "nanny" going forward.  As she is kneeling down to get in position she stumbles and falls on the dummy.  I quickly think "i know i've only gotten a short amount of cpr info so far but i can save this woman!!!!"  I swear that's what i thought.  She was fine and did the rest of her resuscitating on the classroom table.  I didnt think about it then but it just occurred to me, if she finds herself in such a situation in real life she's either going to fall on the dying person or spend 10 minutes trying to drag them onto a table.

look at the form:

I'm not going to go step by step thru the entire class but the Nanny provided a lot of material to discuss.

Upon finishing our first round of life saving and maybe someone asked a question the Nanny than asked "What if the person is diabetic?  My landlord is diabetic."  I could tell the instructor wasn't sure where this was going but encouraged some more information.  As we found out the Nanny had tons of information to provide THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE CLASS.  "One time I came home and my land lord was acting funny.  I walked up the stairs and he was saying he was feeling tired.  He then fainted.  When he got up I got him some orange juice.  He then had to take something."  The instructor was still confused... I am probably not doing it justice but eventually we came to the agreement that if a person is breathing you don't need to nor should you begin performing CPR on them.
 
Later when we were discussing infants choking, she sorta chuckled in a been there, done that kinda way and said "Oh yea, they choke a lot, they turn blue".  This was received by five frozen stares...  How many choking children has this woman been around????

Any way, besides all of that, I feel Ashley and I are fully equipped to save the lives of any one we see needing it.  You got a stopped heart?  Don't sweat it.  Something wedged in your windpipe and you can't breathe?  Pbbft, no problemo.  Consider the location safe!