Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: endotracheal tube

  • The Lazarus phenomenon: When the dead return to life

    Tom SeweNairobi, Kenya It is a few minutes after 2 AM. A middle-aged woman lays motionless on a table in a hospital emergency department with tubes protruding from multiple orifices. The relentless cardiac monitor screams its flat-line signal as the code-blue team pants, scrubs clinging to their sweaty chests after a phenomenal forty-five-minute cardiopulmonary resuscitation…

  • The sweetest gift

    Subramoniam RangaswamiKarnataka, India It was the mid-1970s. We were busy packing our portmanteaus and bags in preparation for leaving our campus residence in Calicut Medical College in Kerala1 where I had been working as an assistant professor of orthopedics. I thought I heard someone cough outside on our doorstep. Sure enough, I saw a man…

  • I don’t know how it happened

    Rae BrownLexington, Kentucky, United States There are angels in every emergency room. They sit above the fray and listen and learn. They hear the laments of the doctors and nurses as they try to save a child. They hear the sometimes incredulous comments of those who may be responsible, in some way, for what is…