CPR in the Pew
Category: Faith...
Posted Sunday, December 05, 2004 at 10:37 PM [GMT-6]

Update (12/6/04): According to a report from earlier this afternoon, the gentleman whose predicament is described below was recovering well. He did not have a heart attack; as far as we know, he's expected to make a complete recovery. I was told that this was his first visit to our church. I suspect he'll either be back as soon as possible...or he never wants to see the inside of our building again!

An elderly man collapsed during our worship service this morning. He was sitting three rows ahead of us and just across the aisle...probably ten or twelve feet away from me.

I've often thought that if I was going to have, say, a heart attack, the best place for it to happen would be in our church on a Sunday morning. For one thing, every third congregant seems to be a healthcare professional. Within thirty seconds, this gentleman was surrounded by a doctor, a psychiatrist (they go to med school too, you know), several RNs and at least one nursing school student.

We're also a well-equipped church for such things. Before the ambulance could arrive, he was already hooked up to our portable defib machine, which was monitoring his vital signs (albeit in a very noisy fashion; the mini-shocker talks you through the process, which is more than a little distracting in a worship service), and oxygen was also standing by.

But, really, the most important thing is that you instantly have 700+ people praying for you. In this case, once our pastor was aware of the situation, he called the services to a halt and led us in prayer for the man, his wife, and those attending to his needs. We continued in that attitude until the gentleman was carried out on an EMT rolling stretcher and transported to the hospital, which is but three blocks south of the church (yet another reason to pick our church).

The man was conscious and alert when they carried him out. He never needed CPR or required the defibrillator, despite being initially unresponsive after the collapse. One could argue that he just experienced a fainting spell. I don't know.

But, I keep coming back to 700 prayers being lifted simultaneously at the point of need. That's tapping into some significant power. I believe that not all the medical personnel attending to him were visible.