Lippincott NursingCenter.com is partnering with Lippincott Solutions to bring you an inspired nurse’s story every month. Here is the August 2018 inspired nurse story, Candy and CPR.
 
Candy and CPR
Dawn Miller, RN
Lexington Healthcare
 
Being a nurse is more than just job and a paycheck -- it's a calling. The day I decided to become a nurse was when I was 13 and my younger cousin began choking on piece of candy he’d gotten from a waitress at restaurant. We were in the backseat of my grandmother's car when he started to cough and then begin to turn blue. My grandmother pulled over, took him out of the car, placed her arms around him and began performing the Heimlich maneuver. The piece of candy had been lodged causing my cousin to become unconscious. I was frozen and couldn't speak but prayed in that moment for a miracle.

My grandmother asked me to call 911 while she laid my cousin on the ground and began doing CPR. I didn’t know what CPR was at the time but did know that my cousin was dying. I watched as my grandmother began pumping on his chest and then saw the piece of candy shoot out of his mouth. She then began breathing life back into him and my cousin started to cough and tried to sit up. I looked at him and then at my grandmother who had started to cry. I asked her how she knew how to do that, and she said, "I learned it many years ago, when I was a caregiver in the hospital."

She then told me how she had always wanted to be a nurse, but money was tight. At that point my cousin stood up and began to tug on my grandmother's shirt asking for more candy. My grandmother and I just looked at each other and began to laugh, knowing that if she hadn’t had the skills needed to save his life, things might have gone terribly wrong. That was the longest ten minutes of my life, but I knew in that moment that I wanted to save people. I wanted to fulfill my grandmother's dream of becoming a nurse, and several years later I did. And although the journey was tough at times, I succeeded and have been a practicing nurse for ten years now, loving every minute of it.