"ABC--Airway, Breathing, Circulation"

I renewed my CPR certification with a class today—it’s required, if I want to keep teaching exercise classes, which I do.

I’m always glad to learn the information, which has changed each time I go. The teachers are the kind of people who would spend their spare time teaching other people how to save lives—generally, they’re very nice folks.

Yet each time I go, I become even more frustrated. Here we are, getting together to learn a technique that we hope we never have to use. We can’t practice it on each other in class, or “rehearse” with friends or family, because if you don’t need right now, it would be dangerous to do so.

Studies say that we won’t remember many of the details of how to do it just 3 months from now. And even if we do, only 5-10 percent of CPR recipients survive.

Then comes this punchline: we already have a way to drastically improve those odds. There are brands of portable defibrilators that not only apply the appropriate electrical stimulus to rescue the patient, but also give you step by step instructions so that if you’re old enough to hear and follow directions, you can use the machine.

CPR, and basic life saving courses would still be valuable—defibrilators are only part of the solution and don’t, for instance, resolve respiratory problems.

But, more people in America die of heart disease than of anything else. And defibrilators should be prominently displayed all over the place in this country. If I had to guess why they’re not, I’d say it’s either about the cost, the desire to avoid the subject or emergency, or the fear that such a display would be considered a “downer” to the general public.

I understand those concerns. Still, learning to do the chest compressions, and other CPR stuff on its own, I feel like I’m stuck in a time warp. Like I’m learning proper technique for the bucket brigade, because people just don’t like hydrants.
So come on, people! Let’s find a way to make them “hot”! If you know a celebrity has a heart condition, stay near by with a defibrilator! Somebody make em sleek, and call ‘em “iFibs”! Until we do, let me remind you of this awful but true fact—as of right now, if you have to have a heart “event,” and you’re not in a hospital, the safest place to be is also the tackiest place— any Las Vegas casino, where they have defibrilators, and they’ve saved about 18,000 lives since putting them into use.