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It was a Sunday morning. Being a medical student, who only gets Sundays off, sleep is the highest priority. This changed that morning. One phone call had me out of bed and in my car within two minutes of receiving the call.
My friend had heard a car crash from his house. As soon as he went to the balcony and saw the condition of the car and the bike that had collided, he called me immediately. I got there as soon as I could, parked my car and ran towards the casualties.
Given the condition I arrived in, people would never have believed my credentials. A pair of shorts and a t-shirt as an attire, uncombed messy hair and gasping for air hardly says one is a medical student trained in the first response. I think it was the confidence with which I approached and the way I spoke authoritatively that helped me handle the situation.
There were two casualties, both safely transferred to the side of the road by a method very commonly known as the ‘bakra lift’. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s the way you carry a goat from all fours after it has been slaughtered. The first casualty had his abdomen ruptured and his intestines had herniated outside his body. I had to label him black (expectant death). The second casualty was bleeding from the head and lying unresponsive. This was the casualty I attended to.
To stabilize the c-spine, I luckily had my friend who had come down to the scene by then. Putting his trust in me, he secured the c-spine faster than you would expect from a first timer. In the panic, I forgot to arrange for a barrier beforehand and went with the lower part of my shirt as a barrier to giving rescue breaths. This went on for about fifteen minutes before I was interrupted by chaos and attempts by spectators to pick up the casualty like it was their dropped property.
I had forgotten to anticipate an important factor, that is, people’s priorities change from saving a person to transferring them to the ambulance (with no spinal board, defibrillator or paramedics by the way), as soon as it arrives. I had to stop compressions, get up and literally scream at the top of my voice to get the mob to start obeying me. Realising there was no way they could have let me do compressions now, I decided to move on.
Gently taking over the c-spine from my friend, I gathered volunteers to log roll the casualty on the stretcher (I am glad the ambulance at least had that). At this point, the guys from the ambulance had stepped away (they had no clue as to what was happening). Apart from the occasional pulls on the casualty’s limbs from time to time by random self-appointed volunteers who I had to stop by screaming, the log roll was successful.
At the time of this incident, I was a very junior instructor and not a very active member of FRIP (First Response Initiative of Pakistan). This was my first attempt at trying to save a life. My legs were trembling with fear as I was giving compressions. That day, I did not manage to save a life. The next six months, I applied for almost every workshop that FRIP conducted, in hope that one day, one of my students will succeed at saving a life.
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