Currents in Education
YMS students get dose of reality
By Melissa Wood
Emergency nurse Linda Dutil shows some of the equipment used for pumping stomachs with two student volunteers from York Middle School. The eighth-grade students also watched a real-life slide show of such a procedure. Dutil presented images and told stories to the students last Thursday to demonstrate how harmful drugs and alcohol are to the body.
Photo by Melissa Wood
Linda Dutil, R.N., said when doctors treat patients who have taken excessive drugs or consumed a large amount of alcohol, they have to make the choice between two types of treatment.
If the doctor chooses Plan A, a patient drinks two glasses of activated charcoal, a thick, chalky, tasteless liquid that collects the ingested substance like a magnet, helping it pass out of the body in 25 minutes but causing ugly side effects such as explosive diarrhea and stomach cramps.
However, a patient is lucky to have the first option. In most cases, the doctor chooses Plan B and inserts a tube through the patient's nose or mouth that runs the charcoal directly into the stomach, more quickly eradicating the substance if it poses an immediate danger.
Dutil shared this and other firsthand, sometimes tragic, experiences as an emergency room nurse treating teens harmed by drugs, alcohol and self mutilation with eighth-graders at York Middle School last Thursday, Jan. 25. She said the theme of her program "A Dose of Reality" is both the importance of making good choices and understanding the consequences of bad choices.
The event was organized by York Middle School Resource Officer Scott Cogger to help raise awareness of the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.
"We're hoping it helps them understand that the choices they make really affect what happens to them," said Principal Steve Bishop, who added that he hoped the program would help students as they make the transition into high school this summer. "I think there's enough here for them to get an understanding of what they might face in the future if they make some poor choices."
Dutil made those consequences plain to students by sharing stories of other middle school-age children and what happens to a person's body as a result. She also talked about what a student can do to help a friend who has made a poor choice.
Dutil told the story of 13-year-old Jessica who, after drinking a few beers at a friend's party, said she didn't feel well and went into another room to lie down.
"She sat down on the bed, she laid back, she passed out, she threw up, and she choked on her vomit," said Dutil.
Jessica's friends called 911 but were too late to save her. Dutil said if her friends had just rolled her over when she threw up, she probably would have lived.
"Make sure you never, ever let them be alone," said Dutil. "If you do that, you probably will save their life."
Dutil also told the story of a 14-year-old boy who died from alcohol poisoning. Alcohol poisoning, she said, shuts down the respiratory center of a person's brain, causing it to tell your lungs that they don't have to breathe anymore.
When Dutil, who was on-duty in the emergency room when the boy was brought in, asked the boy's friend what happened, he got angry, telling her, "I made sure he was safe. I brought him home and put him to bed."
Dutil also presented a slideshow of a stomach-pumping and of drug users whose appearances had been dramatically affected by drugs. Students gasped at the images of people whose faces, over a short period of time, went from normal in appearance to sunken and covered by sores.
"It's really important for you to see what drugs do to your body," said Dutil. "These drugs just rot your body from the inside out."
Dutil also talked about power or energy drinks, which are advertised as giving a person "wings." She said a soft drink such as Mountain Dew has 30 milligrams of caffeine and coffee has 50, but the energy drinks have 80 to 100.
"That is a lot of caffeine in your body," said Dutil, adding the caffeine is especially harmful to young people whose bodies are changing and growing.
After the presentation, students questioned what harm the drinks caused. Dutil said the caffeine created a perceived energy by making a person's heart race, affecting the adrenal gland and messing with the stress hormone.
"It's not like some magic energy in a can," she said.
Dutil explained that drugs, such as nicotine, change the chemicals in your brain, making you believe you need to do it over and over again.
"That's why people get so addicted," she said.
Dutil is from Waterville and has been speaking to teenagers around the country about these issues for 12 years.
She told the students that she remembered being their age and having a speaker come to her school who simply told them that if they did drugs they would die. The speaker was greeted by silence from kids who didn't connect the message with their own lives.
"I am not here today to lecture," she said. "I am not here to tell you what to do."
