Momento Mortis

I wrote a couple days ago about how being reminded of death plays an important role in our full appreciation of life. This is a sequel of sorts to that post. I wasn't expecting to have one, but circumstances decided differently.

Momento Mortis means "moment of death." I was driving home from work yesterday and saw a man jogging on the side of the road stop, rest his hands on his knees, and then keel over backwards. That is certainly not normal, but the fact that his head bounced off the road showed that he was not just tired. I immediately stopped and pulled over along with several other people. We all ran over to him and found him unresponsive. One guy wearing a brown shirt called 911 as we circled him asking if he was ok. He was completely unresponsive and after about 30 seconds of us getting there stopped breathing. Another guy wearing a green shirt checked his pulse and then started doing chest compressions.

It was a surreal experience. I would like to say I was engaged in the situation and did something useful, but I honestly just stood there. If there hadn't been other people around I probably would have gotten to the point of calling 911, but I don't know if I would have started CPR. I wasn't freaking out, but I wasn't reacting either.

The guy started breathing again after a minute or so of CPR, but then stopped again. The green shirt guy started CPR up again and kept it up until the ambulance got there. In contrast to my dazed response the EMTs EXPLODED out of the ambulance and swarmed the guy. They took over the CPR, ended up defibrillating him three times, got an IV in him and then whisked him off to the hospital.

We stayed around a bit longer to talk to the cops and eventually heard that he had survived. So thanks to the quick action of green and brown shirt guys the runner made it. So while it wasn't a "momento mortis" it certainly could have been.

The whole situation was a wake up call for me. This is the third time I have directly observed or been the first to a scene of an emergency. Thankfully all three times there were people nearby who knew what to do and the situations were resolved as well as could be expected. That might not always be the case though, and while I don't plan on becoming a doctor I don't want to be in a similar situation in the future and watch someone die because I didn't have a little bit of training. Because I just stood there watching ignorantly. I want to know what to do, and have the wherewithal to react.

I want to be ready.