Shocked to Life

Usually, when a surgeon gives emergency massage to a stopped heart, he soon knows where he stands: either the heart picks up and beats strongly, or it fails to. The case of Darline Timke, 21, a student nurse who became a patient at Chicago's Presbyterian Hospital, was different. After more than 100 minutes of massaging by four doctors working in relays, her heart still refused to settle down to a steady pumping beat. Instead, the muscles, manipulated through an incision in the upper abdomen, fluttered spasmodically and at cross purposes--an effect known as "fibrillation."

What was needed, obviously, was a "defibrillator." Until recently, no such thing existed, and at the time of Nurse Timke's operation last December, none had been used in Chicago. By good fortune, a member of Presbyterian's staff, Dr. Don Fisher, had built one for himself with $32 worth of electrical equipment. As the second hour of Nurse Timke's ordeal wore on, somebody in the operating room remembered Dr. Fisher's untried gadget.

Dr. Fisher had kept his defibrillator sterilized, ready for just such an emergency. It was rushed to the operating room, another incision was made in the patient's chest, and the machine's two electrodes were placed on opposite sides of her heart. A doctor pressed a button and sent a 110-volt, 1 1/2-ampere current shooting through the heart for just half a second. Shocked, the fluttering heart muscles jerked to a sudden stop. Then, to the vast relief of the doctors, the muscles began pulsing in a steady, even rhythm. Nurse Timke would live.

The next question was what damage, if any, had been done to her brain. Nurse Timke had been scheduled for a minor operation on her nose, to relieve sinusitis, when she passed out cold because she was supersensitive to a local anesthetic (butacaine). It had taken 4 1/2 minutes to open her diaphragm and begin heart massage. Afterward, the doctors could find no organic damage from oxygen starvation, but when Darline Timke first regained consciousness, she had slipped back through two years of her life. It was 1949 to her. and she was a senior at Downers Grove high school.

Last week, near recovery, except for a small gap in her memory (from the operation to New Year's), Student Nurse Timke was back on duty. She was thinking of switching from obstetrical to psychiatric nursing. Said she: "If I get along well in it, I might specialize in caring for amnesia victims."

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