Nurse Linda, as she refers to herself, shared a few stories about what happens in the ER. She told the story of Jessica and Tony, two teenage friends. One weekend Tony’s parents went away and Tony decided to have a party. When Jessica arrived, Tony gave her a beer. She declined. Tony and the rest of the teenagers pressured her into drinking. After several drinks, Jessica said she didn’t feel well. She went to a bedroom, laid down and passed out. Eventually her friends checked on her to find she had choked on her vomit and asphyxiated herself. They called EMTs and they got Jessica to the hospital. After about 20 minutes of CPR in the hospital, Jessica was pronounced dead.

“Working in an emergency room, we see lots of things,” Dutil said, “but this was hard and very, very sad. It was totally preventable.”

In Jessica’s case, if her friends had rolled her on her side when she passed out or stayed with her when she wasn’t feeling well, the outcome would have been different.

“I do programs like this across the country and people ask me, ‘How do I know when to get help?’If your friend is throwing up, stumbling, his or her skin gets bluish-gray or their breathing is not right, get help,” Dutil said. “The biggest indication of the need to get help is the fact that you’ve asked that question. You have the power to save your friend’s life.”

Next, she explained that alcohol poisoning acts to shut down breathing and that’s why people die.

When people arrive at the emergency room with alcohol poisoning or a drug overdose, the doctor chooses Plan A or Plan B.

Plan A is the doctor’s choice for patients who have made choices that will make them sick but not kill them. The treatment for Plan A is to drink activated charcoal. The charcoal binds with stomach contents, neutralizes the poison and allows the poison to pass quickly out of the body.

Doctors choose Plan B when the patient has made choices that could kill them or if the patient refuses to drink the charcoal. Plan B involves gastric lavage, commonly known as stomach pumping.

At this point Dutil asked for two volunteers. Seniors Alexander Parent and Heather Theriault joined her on stage.

Parent donned a hospital gown and Theriault became a nursing assistant. Dutil then began to explain gastric lavage in intimate, gory detail.

Then as Parent’s eyes got wider, Dutil said that they were only going to “act out” the procedure.

Next, Dutil presented a Powerpoint slide show, complete with graphic photographs of a patient having his stomach pumped.

Then she showed before and after mug shots of the physical effects of drug use.

“I asked a doctor to help me explain the effects of illegal drug use, “ she said. “He said, ‘Drugs rot the body from the inside out.’ I think these pictures show this.”

Dutil ended the presentation with, “Always get help for your friends – across the country people die because they don’t get help for friend. Make good choices and always get help for your friends.”

For more information on Dutil, go to www.dose-of-reality.com.