Our Most Valuable Possession.

This begins my 17th year teaching CPR.  I estimate at least 10,000 people have come through my classes; a few have even told me stories of how they used their skills to save someone's life.  I've tried to get bored with teaching CPR the way I do everything else and I've come close a few times, even selling my equipment once.  I bought it back 6 months later.  There's something about it; I can't help myself, I'm totally addicted to showing people how easy it is to give someone back their most valuable possession.

 I tell each of my classes, and I firmly believe it myself, that there's not an easier, more valuable class they could ever take.  We seem to be hard-wired to value our lives more than anything else.  A raging house fire will cast that fundamental truth into sharp relief - "It could have been worse" we say, "We're destitue and homeless but at least we're alive".  

Our primary need as a human is oxygen.  On average (50 year-old male, room temperature, sea-level), our brains will shut down after about 2 minutes without it, irreversible damage will begin at around 6 minutes and death will occur in the vicinity of 10 minutes.  Usually, we meet the need for oxygen easily and regularly by doing 2 things so simple we don't even think about them: we suck in breaths and our hearts squeeze.  Put (very) simply, our breaths bring in life-giving 21% room-air oxygen which then crosses the membranes in our lungs to bind with the hemoglobin in our blood which is then squirted around our slick arterial pipes by our strong, thick reliable hearts until the oxygen arrives where it's needed and bails off the blood cells.  When our machinery betrays us and the breathing and squeezing stop, the clock begins to tick toward an irreversible outcome.  All CPR does is replace those two vitally important things that the person isn't doing - breathing and sqeezing.

While various organizations feel they've arrived, through study and observation, at the most effective formula for delivering those squeezes and breaths, the numbers they make you memorize can cause people to freeze in panic or worse, abstain from doing anything, afraid they'll mess up the formula.  So I remind my students that no one is standing over them with a clipboard, stopwatch and tape-measure when they're performing real CPR - they just need to remember to breathe gently and squeeze hard and fast in the center of the chest.  If they can overcome their panic, call 911 and start CPR right away when a person collapses, that person has a 50% chance of getting back their most valuable possession.  The realization dawns on the class participants that rather than mentally ticking off flow sheets, ratios and diagrams, they can be heroes really quite simply!

As I watch the students visibly relax and share grins of hope and determination, my addiction grows.