Transcript Video Barbara McLean - Survivor Story My 19th, 2025 Barbara McLean - Survivor Story My 19th, 2925 Hello there everyone. I'm here with my wonderful colleague Mikan. Mikan and I have been together a long time. We were together in the medical intensive care unit at Grady Hospital and we're together in the CBIC with Grady Hospital where she's a phenomenal charge nurse and really is the glue that keeps our unit together. We appreciate her so much, but something I want to share with you was about our very first patient that we put in therapeutic hypothermia. Um, and this was a young girl. She was 16 years old and she, uh, basically the way it was described to us is she fell out in her uh in her chemistry class, fell to the floor. Her teacher did CPR and they called 911 and all of her friends remember said we think she inhaled her bubble gum. Well, they brought her to the emergency department at Grady and she was outside of our protocol because our protocol required that you'd be 17 years of age and she was 16, but the uh the then director of the medical ICU called me because I've written the protocol and said, Will you go take a look at her and see if you think she can qualify so I went down to the ED. I called him back. I said she absolutely qualifies. So we brought her upstairs into the incredible capable hands of Mikan and uh also David. Faith, yeah, I'm, I'm and and the and the last one, so David, Faith Mican and Bernard were the main nurses who took care of this patient the first time that we were doing therapeutic hypothermia to 33 degrees. So can you talk a little bit about what that was like? Oh, it was very scary because it was really unknown. Uh, we had a lot of stuff that we got to learn and understand to properly take care of that young girl, and I mean I'm a mother and I can sympathize with the with the mother and the family, um, but at the end. Babe, we don't want to tell the end yet. It was very difficult, but we made it we made it happen. Barbara was there every step of the way. Medication explained with cooperation with uh pharmacy also was there. Anything that we didn't understand, we were so lucky to have Barbara number because we call her in the middle of the night and ask her questions and she was always available to support us. Thank you, thank you so we went through our basic, uh, therapeutic hypothermia protocol. So, uh, on rewarming, uh, of course her processing changed, so she was processing her fentanyl and propofol very quickly and we were having to increase that in order to maintain her intubation. And the medical team, despite, I think, uh, what we all felt was let let's extubate this girl they wanted her to go down to MRI so they asked for her to be uh re-sedated with uh increasing analgesia, and it was very busy in the unit so I said I'll take her downstairs to MRI. I went downstairs with her to MRI boluster with fentanyl, boluster with propofol. She sat up. In the MRI suite in the MRI suite, extubated herself and I'm yelling shut off the magnets and I said call up to the unit. Well, they called a code and wasn't necessary because she extubated herself and I finally got in the room and she said where is my mother. And I was so excited and so happy and also really worried about about her vocal cords, but um I called up and I said I'm bringing her upstairs she's awake she's alert tell mom to meet us at the door. I know she came back she came back we brought her upstairs. Her mother was crying. We're all we were all crying. It was so fantastic and then um we transferred her actually to Choa so they could evaluate her for long QT syndrome. Which is indeed what she had and she had 4 siblings, two of whom also because of her, she saved their lives because they all got all 3 of them got AICDs. And 2 years later I was invited to her high school graduation. I went to her graduation and to her house and then to her college graduation and uh and now she's a she's a very big presence on social media. She's got a huge presence and she graduated from college and she's working and she's phenomenal. And it's because of the work of people like Mican and my other colleagues we, we work together as a team and pretty much we take on whatever challenge there is we're gonna take it on together and sometimes we're befuddled and sometimes we are trying to figure things out but we work together and work together. One thing I can tell about Miss Barbara, she's always present in the room. She's always at bedside. If there's something new that we don't understand, we don't have to be afraid because we know she's there present by phone, by email at any time of the hours of the day. I mean she's there she's a great support to our units and team. Can I love you. Created by
