One morning as I looked out at the busy waiting room of my internal medicine practice, I watched a new patient, a trim, healthy-looking young woman, check in. Neatly dressed and in no obvious distress, she turned from the reception counter—and without warning collapsed onto the carpeted floor. No cry. No clutching of her chest or head. No weak-kneed stagger as she tried to make it to an empty chair. She just went down on the spot.
I ran around the counter out to the waiting room, unwrapping my stethoscope from my neck as I went. “A-B-C,” I thought to myself: airway, breathing, and circulation, the first three things you check when someone collapses like this. Within seconds I was kneeling next to the woman. My fingers found a regular pulse alongside her windpipe, and I saw that she was breathing without difficulty. Relieved this was not a cardiac or respiratory arrest, I released my own breath and watched as she opened her eyes. “Are you all right?” I asked.
