A Memorable Patient

A Memorable Patient

Early in my career, I had the occasion to participate in the resuscitation of a patient whose heart suddenly and unexpectedly ceased beating. She was limp, unconscious and clinically dead.

It happened in the early 1960s. The patient was Virginia Gould—a friend from my home town in Alaska and the aunt of a classmate of mine, Virginia Rose Young.

Virginia, the aunt, presented herself to my dental office on a Friday afternoon with a terrible toothache in a left jaw molar. A dental exam revealed a healthy second molar tooth devoid of any decay and the x-ray revealed no abnormalities. I gave the patient ASA and codeine tablets for pain and told her to call my house in case the pain continued, thinking all along that the tooth was okay.

The following day, she called my home at midnight and excitedly stated that the pills did not contain the pain. In fact, she said, the pain was so severe she thought that she was going to die.

I was shocked but I believed her and told her– get dressed, and I’ll pick you up in ten minutes to take you to the Doctor’s Hospital downtown to be checked by an MD friend of mine, Bob Carlson, who I knew was on emergency service in the ER on that particular night.

We presented ourselves and Dr. Carlson immediately saw the patient. After she was secured in her hospital room and we were examining and questioning her systems, her heart just stopped.

Bob and I immediately put her on the floor and began external thoracic compression and exhaled breath into her mouth in an attempt to resuscitate her. Within minutes, her heart began to pump, and she started to breathe. Hours later, I went home and went on with my life but kept in contact with Ms Gould.

The following summer, 1965, I took my family and my two children to Alaska to renew old friendships and while travelling on the ferry between Prince Rupert BC and Ketchikan who did I run into but Virginia Gould on deck enjoying the unusual sunny day. We were both elated and gushed over her recovery. We both considered the whole experience a reprieve from death’s door.

The original pain was cardiac angina pain apparently and very unusual. The pain usually radiates from the heart to the left arm and shoulder but in this case it was the jaw and one tooth. Recent discoveries of heart attacks in women shows that the systems of angina and cardiac problems do not follow tradition pain from angina as it does in men.

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