How asking the right question can save a life?
Sunday, January 7th, 2007About two hours ago, I came face to face with a man whose life will never be the same.
I was finishing up my shift in the hospital when I was paged to the Emergency Room to see a 70 year old man complaining of a tightness in his chest. Just a few minutes earlier I was packing up my stethoscope and putting my lab coat away getting ready to head home for dinner when the page came in. When I pulled up his laboratory studies on the computer, I knew instantly that his tightness in the chest was not “indigestion in the chest” like he thought but it was a bonafide HEART ATTACK! Yes, a heart attack.
Mr. X had been experiencing chest pressure for two days before his wife finally asked him the one question that saved his life. She had seen him go from an active retiree working around the house to a man who couldn’t even walk across the room without stopping to catch his breath. When she noticed that he’d been basically sitting on the couch all day, she finally asked him the key question that lead to his presentation to the hospital. She asked him simply, “Honey, you haven’t been yourself, what’s wrong?”
With that simple question–What’s wrong?–Mr. X finally admitted to his wife that he had been suffering with pressure in his chest that would just not go away for the past two days. She didn’t berate him about not telling her earlier, she didn’t blow it off and she didn’t think that he was just trying to get out of helping around the house. She knew something was very wrong with him, so instead of nagging him to death, she told him to get dressed because she was driving him to the hospital.
Now, let me say this—Mrs. X could have killed her husband. Mrs. X did recognize that her husband needed immediate medical attention BUT she should have called 911 instead of driving him to the emergency room. When anyone is experiencing symptoms suspicious for a heart attack, call 911. Mr. X was lucky in the sense that he didn’t go into a fatal heart rhythm on the drive to the hospital but he could have died on the way.
Today was a wake up call for Mr. and Mrs. X. They both found out that their lives were forever changed once Mrs. X asked that simple, life saving question, “What’s wrong?”
So, whenever you see someone around you that doesn’t look quite right, ask them what’s wrong? You may save their life and you never know…the next life that’s saved may be your own.
Saving one life at a time…
The Health and Wellness Queen,
Dr. Traci Ferguson
