A Remarkably Heroic Feat

It was on TV, on the radio and the following article in the paper:

Officer Praised In Saving Baby

July 12 2005

City police officials are praising one of their North End beat officers, saying his quick actions saved a baby's life over the weekend.

Officer X, an 11-year veteran of the Police Department, was on foot patrol about 9:30 p.m. Saturday in the 2600 block of Main Street when the child's grandmother approached X with the unconscious boy in her arms, police said.

X, who was training probationary Officer Y, performed CPR on the baby, who regained consciousness after about three minutes. The boy, reported Sunday to be 1 year old, was taken by ambulance to Children's Medical Center, where he was treated and then released, police said.

"It was just a remarkably heroic feat by Officer X," Assistant Police Chief Z said Monday.

X was in a police-sponsored training course Monday and was not available for comment.

Information was not available about the medical condition that caused the child to lose consciousness, but police said he had a high fever, was not breathing and was turning blue at the time the grandmother found X.
Copyright 2005,


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Okay this happens about once a year. A police officer "saves" a baby not breathing. Gets a lot of PR, picture on the news, etc. In a couple days, they'll have a TV crew filming as the baby and officer reuinite in the thankful parent's home. Etc. Etc.

Of course anyone whith any medical training can see what really happened. The baby had a typical febrile seizure. Their eyes roll back, they can turn slightly blue and it can appear briefly that they are not breathing. Don't worry, if they don't seem like they are breathing, they will be breathing soon.

No baby who ever truly suffers respiratory or cardiac arrest is treated and released shortly after.

But its good PR. Happens all the time. There is never an article about EMS saving people. We get paid to do it. And of course we don't have publicists like police and fire do. A couple years ago the police had a similiar call. The ambulance wasn't there so they threw the not breathing kid in the back seat and drove like crazy to the hospital. Of course the kid was breathing by the time they got there. Maybe a little battered from being tossed all over the back. He too was released a few hours later. The department basked in their glory and ambulance bashed for a few days after that.

Enough complaining.

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Worked double medic for 12 hours with the company's most senior medic -- the two of us both on overtime. You're talking an expensive car. We did a chair car assist, and two BLS transports, including one of 50 miles, and ended our day with a heavy person assist, helping another crew load a patient on their stretcher.

Again, I'm not complaining.

I got paid.

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"Remarkably Heroic Feat" = Doing mouth to mouth on an inner city baby, then washing your mouth out with Vionex at the hospital worried that the baby gave you some kind of disease, which purportedly is what the hero was spotted doing at the hospital