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let me say,that i am very fascinated with CRP and life/death. my neighbor has been a ER/ICU RN for over 35 years at a major hospital. i have asked him if in his long line of work has he ever seen a patient who presented with an initial rhythm of asystole get discharged from the hospital. he told me that he only remembers one such case and it was a 21 yr. old male who had hyperkalemia and went into asystole,and eventually was able to get a ROSC and get discharged from the hospital. i am curious,have any of you had a patient/patients who presented with asystole and were discharged from the hospital?? thanks very much.
I realize that many years have past since this topic was posted but I wanted to share my experience. I am going to try and copy and paste something that I wrote here and welcome comments. I would also post some pictures of the ECG strip that the Cardiologist made copies of and gave to me.. So here goes my story.
In May 2015 I was admitted to the Progressive Cardiac Care Unit at the hospital. For approximately a week leading up to this I'd get intermittent waves of nausea a few times a day, accompanied by the strong sensation that I was going to lose consciousness and perhaps even die. I could feel my heart slowing down with these spells.
After experiencing the same sensation at the hospital I was informed by the Cardiologist that at 4:23am on May 2, 2015 that I was clinically dead. He was quick to let me know that the EKG leads on my chest attested to this.
My body was clinically dead but my soul was very much alive. My soul was outside of my physical body. I recall being up in the clouds. There was a hand reaching out of the clouds toward me. I vividly heard my late mother's very calm voice say, "Trudy you're okay." "It's alright." "Come on step up." As I tried to "step up" and take the hand I suddenly felt one large physical jolt and I was instantly aware of the noise that the "jolt" caused the bed to make. This jolt caused a movement artifact to be recorded at the end of the EEG record.
The cardiologist that came into my room after this happened put name to these spells. He called it "Asystole" and said that the heart just doesn't stop and then restart on it's own and said that it's extremely rare to survive asystole, in fact only 15% of patients that suffer asystole in the hospital survive. Less than 2% survive if it happens outside the hospital even with medical attention.
He said that an AED device wouldn't be able to deliver a shock to my heart because it must detect a rhythm and with me there was nothing.
The doctors assure me that there is no mistake or false reading on the cardiac print out and that I could have been pronounced legally dead after two minutes.
This happened for a reason. Perhaps I am suppose to share the experience with others perhaps it's just another conformation that there is life after this life.
The cardiac print out shows 5 columns on the page. Each column left to right is 5 seconds of time for a total record time of 25 seconds and the dark grey portion doesn't count as it is repeated on the following row.
I am including pictures and a link with this post. The pics are of my blood pressure in hospital and some taken at home just prior to going to the hospital. The picture of my arm is a reaction in the vein that I had to receiving a shot for nausea, I think it was Zofran.
I chose not to have a pace maker implanted. I do want it to be known that the Cardiologist strongly suggested several times that I have one implanted ASAP! I knew a girl that has one put in and died that night. I asked for a second opinion and elected to wear a holter monitor at home for a while. The holter wasn't able to detect anything wrong and at the time I was happy about that. Later on it was explained to me that perhaps it would have been better if they had found whatever caused this and that they were able to fix it.
This could happen again, at any time to me or anyone else. If it was to happen again and my heart not restart itself I hope that people know how much I love them and what an awesome life I've had. If you want to know more research Asystole.
Yes.....cold water drowning......Chicago River....a little boy.
I know this is old Esme, but remember it was a reporter/ cameraman from WGN tossed a cable in the water for the divers to use? The kid's name was Jimmy Tontelevitch (sp). He was underwater for something like 30 minutes. Never forgot that one.
Actually discharged from the hospital completely normal? No. But then again most patients who have gone asystole and live to tell about it go from say the med/surg floor to the ICU, to the tele floor and THEN home. So with HIPAA restraining us from checking on them electronically and preventing us from discussing them verbally when we are no longer caring for the patient, unless it's a small hospital where the nurse works all areas frequently, it would be easy to never know the outcome.
I did have one DNR patient who was on hospice go asystole before I was even licensed (was working as an aide). The tele monitor alerted us, we checked him. He was dead. The resident came up and spent a while making sure he was dead. Definitely dead. Then a few seconds after we covered his face with the blanket prior to postmortem care he sat up straight in the bed and asked what was going on. Scared the crap out of us. He eventually did go home but had terminal cancer anyway. He was the wonder patient on our unit for quite a while.
My brother has anaphylaxisis from IV Vanco in ED (had Vanco multiple times in past 2 yrs for cellulitis) -coded, hyperthermia protocal started in ED. No one expected him to make it out of hospital... needed trach, was home 2 months later after SNF + another hospital stay. Lived 2 1/2 more yrs able to meet 2 granddaughters.
trauma_lama, BSN
344 Posts
A little creeped by OP's fascination, but super interesting thread!