- A 63-year-old man died on a Lufthansa flight on Thursday, according to Swiss-German outlet Blick.
- Witnesses told the outlet the man had blood gushing from his nose and mouth.
- The witnesses said passengers were screaming at the sight.
There are a few things I wish we could really show the public. The first is how brutally savage and undignified CPR really is. And the second is what alcohol abuse really does to a person.
Chronic malnutrition, brain damage, hallucinations, anxiety, internal bleeding, fluid swelling your abdomen like a water balloon, literal ammonia building up in your blood that we treat by deliberately inducing massive diarrhea. That’s not even mentioning esophageal varices and the increased cancer risk.
Alcohol is a horrifying drug.
And then the movie patient pops up and smiles and everything is perfectly restored back to normal instead of, “Oh, we convinced your heart to start beating again, but you’re still unconscious probably because you have brain damage, your kidneys are dying, your blood is acidic, and now we’re gonna put you on a breathing machine. Best wishes!”
And yet everyone looks at me funny when I see the same and yell “sweep the leg!”
I took an infant CPR class at the NICU after my son was born with a slight pneumothorax (air pocket outside his lungs).
They have is these tiny CPR dummies to practice and basically told us to put them on floor and try to press your fingers right through them to the floor. It was so hard to imagine doing it toa real child, and thankfully—6 years in—I haven’t had to.
Much respect to you guys who do it for a living to help the rest of us when we need it most!
I’m a 911 dispatcher, I’ve talked people through CPR countless times over the phone, I have very little confidence that most of them were doing it properly because CPR really is pretty brutal, I’ve taken a lot of CPR classes over the years, and every instructor I’ve ever had has mentioned that if you’re doing it right there’s a very good chance you’re breaking ribs in the process. Unless you’ve actually had training and have an idea how rough it can be I doubt that most people are going to do it hard enough out of fear of hurting the patient.
I’ve luckily never had to do CPR in person myself, although I was once on-scene while it was being performed. I was at a party, someone came inside said they think someone died out front, I went out to see what was going on, came around the corner of the driveway and my friend was already doing CPR on a guy laying in the street who crashed his motorcycle. I know my friend also had CPR training so I let him keep at it, I stood by to relieve him in case he got tired and started counting to make sure he was keeping a good rhythm. I of course know my share of cops, firefighters, EMTs, etc. who have had to do CPR in their line of work, but I don’t exactly press them for any details about it, but I talked to my friend afterwards to make sure he was OK, and he talked about how he could really feel the guys ribs popping as he was doing it.
It was also a pretty good illustration of the bystander effect, when my friend got outside there was already one or two other people pulled over with the accident but not really doing anything, not checking on the guy, not on the phone with 911, just kind of standing there. If you asked them, I’m sure they probably would have said they were blocking traffic with their vehicles or something, but that doesn’t really do any good when the guy needs CPR immediately.
CPR is like blowing into a cartridge game expecting it to work again. It hardly ever works and if it does, it’s not going to work next time unless there are some major changes.
May I ask what you consider to be alcohol abuse? Yes, there are papers and sites and all that. I tend towards trusting the opinion of people on the ground a bit more.
CDC’s take on excessive alcohol
Binge drinking, the most common form of excessive drinking, is defined as consuming
For women, 4 or more drinks during a single occasion. For men, 5 or more drinks during a single occasion.
Heavy drinking is defined as consuming
For women, 8 or more drinks per week. For men, 15 or more drinks per week.
Hospital usually see people on their worse. Friends and family see them on the way to their worse stage.
I’m not sure what you consider to be people on the ground, but one would argue the people publishing peer reviewed research in the field have dedicated a significant part of their lives to that topic and are as “on the ground” as possible when it comes to their area of expertise.
