Nee Naw

I have just had my first cot death.

Since I’ve been at Nee Naw Control, this is the call I’ve been dreading. Cot deaths tend to come in at the very beginning of a day shift or the very end of a night shift — around 7am — because this is the time the baby’s mother or father wakes up (perhaps having had a short lie in because for once the baby isn’t crying) and finds them dead in their cot. Around this time of day, nee naw control is quiet because most of the world is asleep and those who do call in have just woken up and want to be spoken to in a quiet voice. The sound of the call taker receiving the cot death will ring out above those sleepy whispers, and every time it’s happened I’ve thanked the nee naw gods that that call didn’t come through to me and that my next call will be a nice old lady who’s fallen out of bed. Up until now, every call I’ve had about a patient who isn’t breathing (”suspended”, we call it) has been either an old person or someone who has been involved in a road traffic accident. Of course, I don’t place any more value on a child’s life than anyone else’s, but there is a certain horror in the death of a child that isn’t there when a 80 year old passes away. As soon as you become aware of death, you realise that one day you’re going to have to face the death of your parents and grandparents, but no-one bargains that they are going to face the death of the child — especially with no prior warning, before they’ve even had a chance to live.

Of course, one day it had to be me who got the call. It happened just after 7am, at the beginning of my first shift of the week. Saying all that, it wasn’t as nearly bad as I was expecting, actually (for me, that is, obviously it wasn’t great for the baby in question). The baby’s mother wasn’t exactly *calm*, but she did still have her wits about her and figured that answering the questions and doing as she was told would get her further than screaming “ambulance ambulance ambulance” like a lot of callers do. Then a neighbour arrived on scene so we were able to co-ordinate CPR and ambulance meeting with military precision. The ambulance also took less than five minutes to arrive (although five minutes seems like five hours at times like these) so the situation did not get out of hand. There was no hysteria, no mention of death, all efforts were concentrated on doing everything for the child.

I went up to the dispatch desk to ask what had happened next - all they could tell me that was the baby had been rushed into hospital with them still trying to resuscitate him. That doesn’t mean much, though, as they tend to take any non-breathing baby to hospital, even if it’s been dead for a week, just in case. When I am in cynical mode, I think this is just to avoid any chance of being sued, but I suppose it must be a comfort to the baby’s parents to know absolutely everything was done and that we didn’t give up easily.

I volunteered myself for the doctor’s lines for the next few hours — that call was quite enough drama for one day.

Edit 6.10pm
The sector controller came down and told me that the baby didn’t survive. This was as I suspected. She said there was nothing I (or anyone else for that matter) could have done and that the baby had probably been dead hours by the time he was found. Sometimes calls will play on my mind at the end of the day and I will go home and keep thinking about them until I go to bed and go back to work and take some more calls which wipe it out. This wasn’t one of them. I am beginning to realise that it is not the content of the call that can be disturbing, but the feeling that I could have done more, or that it was something I did that stopped the patient from surviving. Even if it’s the caller’s behaviour that caused the problem, it is still my job to calm them down and get them to do the best thing for the patient. That wasn’t the case in this call. I did everything right, the baby’s mother did everything right, the neighbour did everything right, the ambulance turned up well ahead of schedule, and no doubt the crew and hospital staff also did everything right.

And yet a one month old baby still died. Well, no-one said these nee naw stories always had happy endings.