Writer learns CPR basics Published June 26, 2009 By Howdy Stout Tinker Public Affairs TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- Everyone is nervous their first time. Me included. Especially since I hadn't done this in 20 years. CPR, that is. That's part of the reason why I chose to sit at the back of the classroom. But, as the instructor Ann Taggert explained, it doesn't matter where you are. Everyone participates. No exceptions. I joined the morning life-saver class taught by Tinker Technology Center instructor Ms. Taggert at the 76th Maintenance Wing University. During the three-hour class, I and six fellow students learned the basics of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, using an automated external defibrillator and the famous Heimlich maneuver. It's easier than you think. Ms. Taggert began by giving us an overview of the class and what we would learn. It was hands-on and interactive, using video and actual demonstrations. We each had our own mannequin to practice on. Fortunately, it didn't look like anyone I knew. The American Heart Association video is clear and easy to follow. I mean, anyone can watch a video, right? And it really grabs your attention when a man has an on-screen heart attack brought on by aggravation over his goof-up co-workers. It looked real enough to me. Then it was time for the practical side of things. We learned how to do chest compressions. That's the dramatic part where your hands are interlocked and you're compressing the chest to squeeze the heart and keep the blood flowing. You normally do a set of 30 in modern-day CPR. We did them until we all got them right. The mannequins, and the students, got a work out. Next, we learned how to give the "kiss of life." That is, breathing oxygen from our lungs into the mannequin, er, victim. Plastic bags served as the mannequins lungs. "Watch for the chest to rise," Ms. Taggert told us. I blew and the mannequin almost jumped off the table as the plastic bag filled to bursting. "Remember," she added. "It's not like blowing up a balloon. You don't have to use a lot of force. Breathe normally." Right. Sure enough, just a bit of air is all you need. With the basics in place, we learned to put the whole package together. A standard CPR set is 30 compressions and two breaths. Repeat as necessary or until the cavalry arrives. Next came the reality-based scenarios. This was the really interesting part. There's a kid unconscious in the street. What do you do? You find an elderly person on the kitchen floor. What now? The scenarios make you think. Secure the scene, otherwise you might get run over doing CPR on the kid. Check for a response. Grandpa might just be having a snooze on the kitchen floor. Truth is stranger than fiction, remember? We then moved on to the Automated External Defibrillator, or AED. Even for someone like me who still can't retrieve messages from his cell phone, the AED is easy to use. Take it out of the bag and turn it on. Put the pads on the person and plug them in to the device. And then wait for the machine to tell you what to do. It doesn't get much simpler. But then here came the scenarios again. Probably not a good idea to shock the poolside victim covered in water. Dry him off first. And the collapsed sports fan on the metal bleachers? Don't shock him unless you want 300 hundred other electrocuted sports fans to be mad at you, too. Thinking about what you will do is a good mental exercise, Ms. Taggert said, especially as no two real-life situations will ever be the same. That statement alone made me think. It made me think of the times I've seen CPR in action. I watched my mom, a registered nurse, perform CPR on a car accident victim. I watched her do the same thing again on my own father, who collapsed unconscious at my feet after an allergy-induced coughing fit. Then I thought about those I've heard about. The young man at Tinker's paint shop saved by co-workers. The man in my own building who just days before I took the class was wheeled away by emergency medical technicians. If the classroom scenarios made me think, reality made me think even more. I'm glad I finished the class and learned what to do. Again. Everyone should.