Live Infarction

A man has a heart attack in front of you. Do you know what to do? In the hospital, sure, you get on the phone, dial 3737 and get busy. But this time it happens when you're off work, out shopping. Or watching your kid at a sporting event. This man had a fatal MI on live TV and as you can see from the video below, nobody knew what to do. Confusion reigned, he didn't get the help he needed and the next day there was a moment of silence.  

So okay, Representative Caycedo was older, more than likely sedentary, and prone for an MI. But what about the kids? This young man had a fatal heart attack at a martial arts tournament, and the response was just as slow and clueless. Nobody expects young athletes to have heart problems until the stress of the sport exposes a previously undiagnosed condition. What may have triggered the MI in the martial artist was a blow to the chest, unfortunately not unheard of in children's sports:

Commotio Cordis  is the disruption of the heart's cycle due to blunt force to the area surrounding the heart. Of the 1000 milliseconds in the average cardiac cycle there is a small window (10-30 milliseconds) where blunt force will cause this to occur. It basically puts them into Ventricular Tachycardia or Ventricular Fibrillation. Both deadly heart rhythms. 

So be ready. The American Heart Association writes that though there are few studies on survival rates for bystander-assisted CPR, cities like Seattle have a survival rate of up to 30% with witnessed cardiac arrest. A city like New York however, has a survival rate of 1 or 2%. 

Praying, or in dire need?

 Partly to blame for this is a phenomenon known as the Bystander Effect:the more people there are, the less someone is likely to get help.

You know your business. So help.

Don't Get All Huffy About It

Getting huffy, as it were, can be a real problem in the workplace. You would think we're all in this together working for the common good, wouldn't you? Unfortunately many of us never left the schoolyard, where that toothpick chewing, cuffed-jean wearing bully owned the playground.

Bullying has been mentioned before in these pages but it deserves a revisit if for nothing else but posterity. There's a difference between a bully and a difficult person, believe it or not. Some people are just irritating, because, well, they're born that way. A bully is someone whose wish is to exert power over you. He is habitually cruel and overbearing, and makes the work environment difficult. A bully can be a jerk, but a jerk doesn't have to be a bully.

In any case, workplace bullying is way against most hospital policies. If you have an issue with someone, please see your supervisor before it devolves into something unfixable. Horizontal violence makes for nothing but a long day, in addition to raising your blood pressure, making you use all your sick days, and increasing your risk for migraine- or stroke. Calm down for goodness sake. Take a Zumba Class. 

And don't be a bully. 

Don't Have a Stroke

Workplace policy, what's that? Well, for reasons unknown you've been hired to work at your job, not play internet games, update Facebook, or harass your fellow man. Yet as we know, this is common behavior in the workplace. Nonetheless, it's against company policy in most every work environment. But you do what you want, you're an adult. 

The little brain up there is to raise stroke awareness. A lot of people were made aware after the Grammy Awards with Serene Branson's live TV report:

Of course the news was that she hadn't actually had a stroke, rather, it was a migraine attack that mimics a stroke. The fear though, was very real. 

Remember the patient isn't just the heart, as if any of us need that fact drilled into us. But to whit: procedures like hip surgery can make for clots, which make it up to the brain to block oxygen. If your patient starts having difficulty speaking or feeling parts of his body, don't hesitate to call for help. Most hospitals now have some sort of response team to try to avoid a Code Blue. Just don't get huffy if your coworker does it for you if you're not around.

More on that subject tomorrow. Remember to protect your brain. It may be the only one you get.

THIS IS NOT A PYTHON!
 
This is a 15 foot Eastern Diamondback 

rattlesnake - the largest ever caught on

record, in fact. 
 
This snake was found Near the St. Augustine outlet, 

in a new KB homes subdivision just south of  Jacksonville FL.  

 
One bite from a snake of this size would contain enough venom to kill over 40 full grown men.
 
The head of this snake alone is larger than the hand of a normal sized man. 

 

 A bite from those fangs would comparable to being stabbed by two curved, 1/4 inch diameter screwdrivers. 

The knife being used to draw out the fangs for the picture has a blade around 4 inches long.
 
This snake is estimated to have weighed over 170 pounds.
Notice the girth of this snake as compared to the cop's leg.
 
A snake this size has an approximately 5 1/2 foot accurate striking distance (the distance for an average size rattlesnake is about 2 feet).

  This snake has probably been alive since George Bush Sr. was President.