Nurse who brought me back from dead
“I wanted to thank Jodie for saving my life, without her I don’t know where I would have been.”
A NEWCOMB woman made a special visit to Geelong hospital yesterday to thank the Emergency Department nurse who saved her life.
Danica Edwards returned to the emergency departmewnt with a hamper for nursing unit manager Jodie Bourke, who had administered CPR and saved her life after she went into anaphylactic shock last week.
Ms Edwards said she wanted to personally thank the nurse responsible. “I wanted to thank Jodie for saving my life, without her I don’t know where I would have been, she said.”
Ms Edwards said she had arrived at the hospital with her husband last Monday evening after experiencing blurry vision and severe stomach pain.
“I woke up on Monday and I thought I was hung over,” she said.
“I’d just had four wines but I was a little bit delirious — a little bit groggy, just feeling a bit gross and everything was sort of moving.
“It turns out that is the first part of the onset of an anaphylactic reaction.”
Ms Bourke said when Ms Edwards arrived she was doing well but her symptoms started to worsen.
“She went to the bathroom and one of the other patients called out. We went in there and she wasn’t looking great,” she said. “I was taking her pulse and trying to calm her down but her pulse dropped off so I kept it for a minute hoping it would come back but she became unconscious.
“She still had no pulse so I did CPR. It only went for about 15 seconds but that was enough.”
Ms Bourke said Ms Edwards regained consciousness and spent three days in hospital.
“It’s nice to follow up because being in an emergency department, patients go upstairs and we don’t get to follow them,” she said. “This is above and beyond – it’s enough to just to go home and think ‘ yeah I did that today’ but this is just beautiful.”
Ms Bourke said seeing patients like Ms Edwards return was what kept her and other nurses coming back to work.
She said the weekend had been a terrible one in the emergency department.
“Something really awful had happened and it’s hard to come back after those days, but it’s cases like Danica’s that keep you thinking: ‘this is why I come back’,” she said.
Ms Edwards still doesn’t know what caused her allergic reaction but is waiting for more tests and is now carrying EpiPens with her everywhere.