smuga@ahuta.UUCP (j.smuga) (04/09/85)
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** Let me bore you with a true story. One lovely summer's evening my husband and I were in a park near our home with our two preschoolers and an adult friend, when my younger child (almost 3) fell from the monkey bars and landed flat on her face. Good mother that I am, I was right there to help her sit up and brush the dirt off her tongue. Only, the funny thing was that she didn't cry. Her pupils dilated. They dilated all the way; her eyes were a beautiful and mysterious black. They swam. Her head wobbled, and as she slumped over unconscious I finally managed to gasp, "She's not breathing!" Our friend took one look at my blue, unconscious child and ran off "to get some water." Panic does funny things to me. A lot of cliches came true. The passage of time was altered so that seconds passed like hours. The world narrowed to the spot of ground we stood on; I know my other daughter was somewhere nearby, but I did not see or hear her then. A single thought ran through my mind repetitiously: "She can't die like this." My husband tried to carry her away, but I stopped him; there wasn't time to leave the park and look for help. Then he said something that triggered my memory: "Maybe something is caught in her throat." Suddenly I could hear the voice of the man who taught my life-saving class (10 years since) telling me what to do, and, without thought, I began to follow his instructions. You might suppose it would be easy to open the mouth of an unconscious person, but Claire's jaw was clamped shut tight. I never needed to resuscitate her, because, as soon as I managed to pry open her mouth she began to scream. I nearly wept with relief. Afterwards, my pediatrician explained that Claire had suffered "clonic shock" and that she would have come around on her own if we done nothing at all. That's reassuring, but it's even more reassuring to know that, even though I seemed to react incredibly slowly, I could have saved her life if I had to. Maybe first aid training should be added to the curriculum for the child-birth classes so many people attend; every parent should have it. By the way, my daughter is now 6, and has shown no ill effects as a result of her accident.