To want to shout at my new colleague "you didn't die, if you had you wouldn't be here talking shite"

[Whatdoesitmatteranyway]

Just that.

Apparently he was in a bad accident several years ago and "died" three times.

No he didn't. We haven't the ability to resurrect people.

DH does this as well. Tells me about his friend who "died" for 10 minutes after a heart episode. I have pointed out that he can't have died and I get told that no, he did. the doctors told him.

I want to go find a plank and hit either me or him over the head with it - which ever is quickest to shut up his bollocks.

I want to get an ad campaign stating this bloody obvious point because its ridiculous the number of people who parrot it out.

It's a way of describing the situation.

I cannot understand your problem with it tbh.

CPR rarely works so he is a very ‘lucky man’ but not lucky to have been that situation.

There are much more important things in the world to get yourself worked up over.

I’ve worked in Cardiac Rehab and always used to try to give people the correct terminology to sensitively describe what had happened to them. So something along the lines of “you had a cardiac arrest during which your heart stopped and you needed to be resuscitated”.

I would explicitly explain to the person and their family that they hadn’t died. To recover psychologically from such a traumatic event people need to process it and most will benefit from talking about it. I believe that giving them the language to talk about it factually can help.

I would always recommend seeking additional support for people who are struggling to deal with having had a cardiac arrest.

I’m sorry your colleague is being annoying, but I think the kind response is to be supportive and maybe encourage him to look for support?

What is it then?
Alive would be my guess

Ha ha

You are correct though. Your colleague didn’t die.

Wow OP, that's really nasty. He had a traumatic and serious episode and you are bothered by the semantics of it? Which may or may not be accurate. Weird. You might want to take a look at yourself.

He's a new colleague. Maybe he's trying to get to know people by sharing information about himself. Presumably you will be working together for a while. If its not information you want to know, its easy to change the subject to things you do want to talk about and either give him a break or tell him kindly how you feel about it.

I agree with the OP, death is binary, he died or he didn't and he didn't.

My mum had a heart attack in the GP consulting room a few years ago. I had accompanied her as she was feeling breathless but didn't want an ambulance. Mum went down, GP started resuscitating her.

Then we had a nurse literally sitting on her pumping her heart until the ambulance arrived. They got her started again then she had another attack and they used paddles.

Her heart had stopped and she remembers nothing from the moment she mentioned the pain to the GP to the moment she woke up (resuscitated) in the ambulance. According the paramedic she had 'died' in those moments. They were exactly the words they used, I was there!

The good thing was though, as she doesn't recall any of this, the whole event has made her less afraid of dying - because she just had a pain and that was it. If they hadn't got her back she would have been dead. So it's actually been a comfort for her as she's got older.

It may be misnamed but it's a heck of a thing to go through. What does it matter if he says he 'died' - clinically he did. What's the problem? Maybe people should have the sense to say 'I clinically died' when they're around you OP - most of the rest of us understand what they mean though.

The heart is simply a mechanical pump. If it stops, the circulation can be maintained by CPR or by a cardiac bypass machine. The lungs are simply ventilators to allow oxygen and CO2 exchange. If they stop breathing, their function can be supplied by simply bag and masking the patient, or intubating and ventilating them.
Neither of these situations constitute “death”. That is an irreversible state that does not occur until the brain itself dies.
Plenty of patients have survived cardiac arrest, including anyone who has ever had open heart surgery, where it is induced deliberately to facilitate the op.
Nobody, except Jesus, Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter have survived death!
HTH.

It may be medically inaccurate but I have heard ambulance personnel speak in these terms, so I would relax about it.

Everyone knows what your colleage really means he is talking about cardiac arrest followed by resuscitation. Give him some slack he's had a terrible experience and probably wants to underline how close he was to not making it.

If I were you I'd read this then get into a debate with said colleague about whether he technically died or not. Or you could just be empathetic and understand he had a massive life changing accident where he "cheated" death.

www.who.int/patientsafety/montreal-forum-report.pdf

GirlRaisedInThSouth, you're wrong. If the heart is not beating, there is no pulse. In heart surgery, the heart is artificially stopped then restarted.
OP, to have been on the brink of death then resuscitated is life changing in the literal sense of the word. Don't make fun of this person, that's just cruel.

Babdoc
And I doubt that a lay person thinks in those clinical terms.

He's clearly trying to express himself and talk about a traumatic event.

Would it make everyone feel better if he explained that he went into v fib arrest and was resuscitated 3 times?

He doesn't have the medical terminology to describe it does he? Much like a patient who tells his dr that he is bleeding from his bum rather saying anus, rectum or pr.

Wondering what people constitute as dead then? Obviously this chap is not dead, but what is it that makes a person dead?

Goodness, what a strange overreaction. Let him describe what happened to him in the terms with which he feels most comfortable.

Jeez the poor man. He tells you a traumatic thing that happened to him and that's what you focus in on?

As others have explained, he was clinically dead and if they had not succeeded in resuscitating him he would have remained dead.

You should get a large bell and every time he starts up you need to ring it and loudly yell BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!

Poor bloke. Must have been very traumatic for him.
As others have said, try being a bit nicer? You might get used to it.

OP, get over it. Chill. When people experience these things it’s big for them.

And actually resuscitation really is not a given. Most people do not come back. He is very fortunate.

Why are you so angry about this? Why does it matter to you?

The man had a terrible accident and came close to death. That sounds very traumatic.
A bit of empathy wouldn't go amiss instead of arguing over semantics.

A friend of mine does have a time of death on her medical records. They’d started to tell her husband when someone burst into the room and said she’d woken up.

She’s nails.

This is embarrassing OP because you're trying to be smart but you're just wrong. I'm cringing on your behalf. In a cardiac arrest situation the heart isn't beating, the patient is dead. We don't "resurrect" people, but we do resuscitate them.

Also whoever said you can't resuscitate someone with no pulse. Very wrong. You can and we do, literally every day.