[HN Gopher] Falling five storeys from a New York rooftop changed...
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Falling five storeys from a New York rooftop changed my life
Author : danso
Score : 184 points
Date : 2020-10-24 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smh.com.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smh.com.au)
| everydayDonut wrote:
| I don't understand how he takes no meaning out of this. The
| meaning is clearly that there shouldn't be a gaping hole on the
| top of a 5 story building that people can access. Or at least
| that you shouldn't walk around a building you're not familiar
| with at night.
|
| Anyone who thinks there's no meaning to take from these kind of
| events is wasting a huge opportunity to learn that small things
| like a gap in a roof can mean life or death
|
| And he goes back at the end! He feels the fear like he should,
| looks at the gap and is more concerned that he'll learn the wrong
| lesson than learning no lesson!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > The meaning is clearly that there shouldn't be a gaping hole
| on the top of a 5 story building that people can access. Or at
| least that you shouldn't walk around a building you're not
| familiar with at night.
|
| Looking at the pictures, I'd vote for another option. The roof
| of that building isn't designed for casual use. The wall around
| the edge of the building is calf-height with no railing. What
| they're doing is likely trespassing, and they chose to accept
| the risks. The meaning to take from this experience is that you
| should be extra careful when you go places that are clearly not
| meant for you to be.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > The wall around the edge of the building is calf-height
| with no railing
|
| It doesn't matter how fit you are, all it takes is a strong
| wind gust, so many people underestimate this. That kind of
| roof access is meant for maintenance work only.
| anotheryou wrote:
| To add to that: don't ever sit or stand on any covers, you
| might fall down a chimney
| papeda wrote:
| From the end of the article:
|
| > To come so close to death does not provide a shortcut to wisdom
| or contentment. It doesn't answer all your questions or eliminate
| your weaknesses. I'm fundamentally the same person I was before,
| but with one big difference. I'm viscerally aware how tenuous our
| existence is. How you can be walking on solid ground only to find
| it suddenly disappear from beneath you. The meaning comes in what
| I do from this point on. I have been given a second chance at
| life - and it's up to me to make the most of it.
|
| The article is clear that there was nothing intentional about
| this fall, but as a tangent, this excerpt does make me think
| about people who jump intentionally.
|
| This line of thought is a bit ghoulish, but as far as I know
| about 90% of people who make an "unsuccessful" suicide attempt
| never commit suicide [1]. There are confounding variables galore
| here --- maybe it's the toughest cases who pick the most reliable
| methods; 10% is still way above the population risk for suicide
| --- but I've wondered if there's some way to give people that
| "oh, I'm _going to die_ , and I _don 't actually want that_"
| feeling that is apparently not uncommon [2] without actually
| hurting them.
|
| [1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-
| matter/survi...
|
| [2] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/13/jumpers
| kls wrote:
| Years ago I had a legitimate attempt by taking a combination of
| a full bottle of opiates and benzos (A pretty deadly
| combination). I was pretty hell bent on being dead. I know at
| the time, my thoughts where use a gun (I am a big second
| amendment advocate, so was not going to be a statistic in the
| argument), carbon monoxide, pills or hanging. The reason I
| bring this up, is I actually think there are two main branches
| of why people attempt to commit suicide, neither or which is
| for thrill seeking. Those two branches are those that feel a
| tiredness that normal people just don't feel. It an unreal
| tiredness like you want to go to sleep and never wake up. You
| really don't want to be dead but you don't want to go on like
| you are, eventually something happens, you get overwhelmed and
| you see no other way. You cannot think about anything past just
| not being tired in your soul.
|
| I think the second has a form of self loathing and self hate
| possibly combined with that tiredness. I think this reflects in
| the way people choose to commit suicide. I think jumpers have
| to be of the latter mindset, because jumping off a building was
| the furthest thing from my mind. When I committed to it, I just
| wanted it to be over. I did not want to suffer, I did not want
| to fall thru the air contemplating my mortality, I just wanted
| to not exist. I think jumping, suicide by cop and those type of
| attempts come from an internal anger at oneself, I did not have
| that anger, I was just tired. I specifically chose to OD
| because I figured it would do the trick and the fact that going
| out in euphoria seemed to me to be the next best thing from the
| instantaneousness of a bullet. I survived by pure chance and
| luck and am thankful I did and am better now, have not had a
| thought in years, but my point of the post was to say I think
| there is a pattern to the way people choose to commit suicide.
|
| As for the experience without dying, for the particular way I
| felt, the only thing I could suggest is if someone offered to
| put me in a drug coma for 3 months then wake me up and see if I
| wanted to go back for another 3 months. I would have taken that
| option in a heartbeat. I just wanted a break from life.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| > I just wanted a break from life.
|
| I feel that often.
|
| Even a drug coma isn't enough. I'd come back to new bills and
| house maintenance or other little adult annoyances like that.
| And my friends and family would age without me.
|
| My ideal vacation would be: Quit work at 5 pm Tuesday, do
| whatever I like for a year, and come back to work at 9 am
| Wednesday.
| kls wrote:
| Yes I agree on the bills etc. It was more of a if someone
| could wave a magic wand and I just did not have to deal
| with it for 3 months, just knowing that I would not have to
| deal with it, at that very moment would have been such a
| relief.
|
| I had that feeling of if I could just walk away from my
| life for a year too, just leave it all for a year and maybe
| I would be better. Tired in the soul is the only way I can
| describe it to people. At the time I did not suffer from
| depression and I was not depressed, I have ADD and had a
| bunch of life event stack up on top of me to where my ADD
| was so bad that I could not put one foot in front of the
| other. Something as simple as washing the dishes seemed
| like moving a mountain.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I'm reminded of the film _The Game_ (1997), but I won't say
| more as to not spoil anything for anyone.
| admiral33 wrote:
| There's a whole market for that. Roller coasters, haunted
| houses/corn maze etc. They get people as close to the edge of
| that feeling as possible. They won't get that full effect
| though because people know they are safe. If you wanted to get
| the full effect you need to break the illusion that customers
| signed up for midway through. Convince riders that the roller
| coaster is broken while they're still going full speed. While
| in line for the corn maze have a sociable "couple" (staff) go
| before you. While you're going through have one of them start
| screaming running back past you - you continue and find the
| other "dead", background music turns off, bright lights, "exit
| the maze immediately" over a loud speaker... cue chainsaw man.
| akiselev wrote:
| Thank you for the best surprise birthday party idea ever!
| sjg007 wrote:
| Go parachuting. The split second before the chute catches is
| something else.. terrifying. Especially if you tandem jump. I
| imagine bungee jumping is similar.
| flotzam wrote:
| Nathan for You S01E05:
|
| "Nathan makes a haunted house scarier by convincing visitors
| that they have contracted an airborne disease."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nathan_for_You_episode.
| ..
| yellowstuff wrote:
| I don't have hard statistics, but there's a New Yorker article
| about survivors of Golden Gate Bridge suicide attempts that
| says many of them regret the attempt and don't try again. The
| people who survive jumping off a bridge is probably pretty
| close to a random sample.
|
| https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:V_siZl...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| 100% of the people that don't survive never try again either
| though.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| What's your point? The post you replied to is just saying
| "of people that survive, most wish they wouldn't have tried
| it." If the sample is indeed random, that means most who
| didn't survive would feel the same way.
| raunakdag wrote:
| I think he was making a joke. :)
| xwdv wrote:
| Easily could have been killed, and the story would have been a
| young man aged 32 died gruesomely after falling five stories. A
| life barely lived, a death barely known.
| ak39 wrote:
| And yet he didn't! That cooler box, those planks just inches
| from denying him one more day.
|
| I am an atheist but such stories always evoke a delightful
| supernatural indulgence. I was vicarious with my enjoyment when
| he said "The world seemed to vibrate with a new intensity".
| xwdv wrote:
| The people who put the milk crates there saved his life.
| ak39 wrote:
| What an incredible story. Is this what Carl Jung would call
| "synchronicity"?
| qub1t wrote:
| If you actually find yourself falling from a similar height as
| described in this story, what can you do to maximize your chances
| of survival? Try to impact feet first? Sideways and cradle head
| with your arms? TFA says head impact is the main thing that
| determines who survives and who doesn't, but other than that no
| clues as to what to try to do in the situation.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| you can't really do anything. Unless you are prepared for a
| fall, all you would be able to think is ... 'oooopsss',
| followed by an impact sound.
|
| So it's all is down to luck.
| kaminar wrote:
| Seems level headed...didn't sue anyone because it was his fault.
| Amazing.
| nice2meetu wrote:
| I had a similar, though certainly not as bad experience. I was
| sitting with friends at a lookout and I wandered off to take a
| leak. I jumped over a side fence to give some distance, not
| realizing that there was nothing on the other side.
|
| I realized what had happened. My thoughts were along the lines of
| "I'm about to be in a lot of pain, I may as well enjoy it on the
| way down". I was also horizontal on my back.
|
| It ended up being a 10m drop, so not as big as in this story (I
| went back and measured it another day). It was soft dirt at the
| bottom, and there was sort of an indent in the cliff at that
| point so I missed any jutted-out rocks coming down. When I landed
| I bit through my tongue and was horribly winded, but otherwise
| ok.
|
| I am religious but also remember making a firm note on the way
| down that nothing supernatural appeared to be happening, mostly
| because prematurely assigning meaning when these things happen
| tends to annoy me. I don't think I ever thought I was going to
| die, maybe at 10m I didn't have enough time. I just remember
| looking intensely at everything thinking I probably wouldn't get
| the opportunity to fall off a cliff again.
| droopybuns wrote:
| This story is like a true crime story written by an unreliable
| narrator.
|
| "It was dark by now. I was tipsy, but not more so than a regular
| Saturday night."
|
| What a strange piece of [fiction || non-fiction].
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I've said it here before that, even with the best doctors on
| staff, you don't want to end up in a modern hospital alone,
| without a friend or family with you.
|
| The quarantine restrictions sound horrifying.
| mpalmer wrote:
| _The most pressing issue for the orthopaedic team was my left
| shoulder, which was visibly dislocated. Before attempting to
| reattach it, the doctor told me I would be given a dose of
| fentanyl: an opioid that is up to 100 times more potent than
| morphine. He went away, returned and started using a bed sheet to
| try to pop the shoulder back into the socket. Alarmed, I told him
| that I had not been given any pain medication. He didn't believe
| me and kept using the bed sheet to try to yank my shoulder back
| into place. I was howling in pain as I underwent what felt like
| an excruciating form of medieval torture. When a nurse walked by,
| the doctor asked her how much fentanyl she had given me. She said
| she had not given it to me yet._
|
| Horrifying.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I had a tooth extraction without numbing when I was a kid.
| Dentist didn't believe it hurt because so many kids freak out
| for everything dentist related.
|
| Since then I've had many injuries, but in terms of acute pain,
| that was the worst. Only thing that came close was when my
| appendix burst.
| s5300 wrote:
| Ehh. Not the worst thing. People with Ehlers Danlos have to pop
| visibly dislocated joints back into place daily (and yes, it's
| very much painful as fuck)
|
| Arguably the most horrifying is when a male dislocates their
| hip and one of their testicles falls back into that area. You
| can imagine what happens when somebody attempts or succeeds in
| shoving the bone back into it's socket when there's a testicle
| also sitting in the socket. May be more traumatizing for the
| nurse that shoves it back in once they realize what they've
| done :D
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Reseating a dislocated joint without pain medication, without
| any other context, is not the horrifying part.
| freedomben wrote:
| Damn man, please have some compassion for others who may not
| have as high a pain tolerance threshold as you. Not everybody
| experiences everything exactly the same.
| alex_anglin wrote:
| I'm sure you would agree that it is gross negligence
| nonetheless.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| More people will die from medical mistakes than from Covid
| this year.
| chasd00 wrote:
| this happens a lot. my stepfather was in the hospital, a nurse
| came in and gave him a shot of morphine and walked out. another
| nurse came in and before my mom could stop her gave him another
| dose. He coded from the overdose but pulled through.
|
| my sister worked as an admin in some department at a hospital I
| can't remember. a patient coded and they did nothing because
| they were marked do not resuscitate but the patient came back
| on their own. Afterwards, the nurses found the patient was
| labeled incorrectly.
|
| I've told my wife and mother (mom is an RN) that if any of our
| family go into the hospital they are not to be left alone.
| jdeibele wrote:
| I've gone to visits with a partner with metastatic breast
| cancer, my father with colon cancer, and my mother with
| metastatic lung cancer.
|
| It's incredibly useful to have two sets of ears listening to
| what the doctors are saying so that you can clarify what they
| said.
|
| All too often we weren't given anything in writing except
| what I was doing myself. That's improved quite a bit but it's
| still amazing to me that people downplay the usefulness of
| electronic medical records and the printouts that you usually
| get.
| arkitaip wrote:
| This is why checklists have become are a huge thing in the
| medical field.
|
| In your scenario, imagine if the first nurse had it drilled
| into her that she must tick a box on the patient checklist,
| which lies very visible next to the patient and is almost
| impossible to not notice, and you have a physical system that
| makes it difficult to commit mistakes
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| That sure would be nice.
|
| I haven't had any problems of this scale, but my doctor
| can't even schedule a follow-up appointment 3 months in
| advance.
|
| They can't even use a calendar, much less a checklist.
|
| My pills are prescribed for 3 months and they always manage
| to hem and haw and almost miss the window as if the passage
| of time was a recent concept that their practice was
| unequipped to deal with.
|
| On the other hand, every psychiatrist I've ever had, had no
| problem getting my anti-psychotics or anti-ADHD medications
| sent to the pharmacy inside of a day.
| minerjoe wrote:
| Everyone in a hospital should have an advocate with them. My
| girlfried was going through treatment and one day they tried
| to give her a shot, insisting that she needed it. She is
| deatly allergic to most things. I pushed back, refusing the
| treatement. They were looking at the wrong chart.
| raldi wrote:
| This is an incident that desperately needs an application of
| the Five Whys.
| strstr wrote:
| The doctor must have been making a bad inference. They must
| have assumed he had already had been given opiods because he
| didn't look like he was in that much pain (before the
| reduction). I wonder if he wasn't guarding his shoulder
| (because of the spine injury), which would probably make him
| look like he had already been given painkillers. Dislocated
| shoulders are incredibly painful if they are in the wrong
| position. And not particularly painful in the right position.
|
| I can't imagine having a shoulder reduced while having a broken
| back and ribs (and wrist!). The forces required (and precise
| positioning) to do it comfortably would be hard if they had a
| broken back. My shoulder was reduced via the Snowbird method
| [1], which was not very painful. It requires a ton of force on
| your spine (and an assistant pulling on you ribs!), so
| obviously a no-go in this case.
|
| [1] http://www.emdocs.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Shoulder-
| Re...
| mattr47 wrote:
| I've had both morphine via IV and fentanyl via a lollipop. Both
| were in Afghanistan and as far as pain relief goes the morphine
| was way better for me, because I got a large dose in my
| bloodstream. I totally understood at that point why people get
| addicted to that stuff. I did not care about anything at that
| point. The fentanyl just did not have a strong effect on me.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Most fentanyl is administered IV as well, the "100x more
| potent" stuff is mostly misleading because the doses are
| different but it is substantially more effective than
| morphine.
|
| My wife does anesthesia and if they're going to use opioids
| at all, it's almost always IV fentanyl. It's extremely rare
| that patients report any pain afterwards. Though there's a
| big movement toward opioid-free surgery so that's promising.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| As someone who went through a IM nail procedure I couldn't
| have done it without opiates. I didn't get addicted either.
| It's a valuable drug that was abused.
| adwi wrote:
| > IM nail
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intramedullary_rod
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yeah it's absolutely indicated for some surgeries but
| unfortunately it's "defaulted" for many as well, so
| people end up going home on prescriptions for it after
| cases where they didn't really need it. The movement is
| to ID which cases don't call for it and then use
| alternative anesthesia / analgesia to make the post op
| care consist of extra strength Motrin instead of opioids.
| The other part is to dramatically reduce the number of
| doses that people are sent home with. Small barriers to
| access have a huge impact on addiction.
| a_t48 wrote:
| I had morphine for appendicitis. It didn't appear to do
| anything for me. :(
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| You may have needed a higher dose. That sucks though.
| jedberg wrote:
| I've dislocated my shoulder twice. The first time they gave me
| strong opiates and then put it back in. It was painless.
|
| The second time the doctor said pain killers would be dangerous
| and insisted I have absolutely no pain killers in my system
| before reseting it.
|
| His description of it feeling like medieval torture is apt.
| rubenbe wrote:
| I've dislocated my shoulder once and it was reset without any
| pain killers.
|
| While the method indeed is quite similar to medieval torture,
| it was certainly not the worst pain I experienced that day.
|
| Although I might have been lucky that the doctor worked in a
| ski resort and was very skilled in "the art of resetting
| shoulders".
| jedberg wrote:
| My first one with the opiates was at a ski resort too!
| First run of the day, dislocated on the bunny run.
| Ironically, it relocated itself when I stood up, so I was
| like, "oh hey it's ok!". Then I started doing arm circles
| to prove it was ok, and that's when it got stuck out. :(
| WJW wrote:
| Really seems like a "hey nurse did this patient have their
| fentanyl yet?" would have resolved this issue. Anyway if it's
| really 100x more potent than morphine you'd think any person
| that did have it in their bloodstream would not be all that
| capable of stating that they have not had their medication yet.
| nickjj wrote:
| > Really seems like a "hey nurse did this patient have their
| fentanyl yet?" would have resolved this issue.
|
| You'd be surprised at how questionable hospital care is run
| in NY, even with $450 / month insurance with a high
| deductible.
|
| To protect the privacy of the person I know, here's a story
| from 2-5 months ago:
|
| - Person A goes into doctor's office for something pretty
| common
|
| - Doctor requests cat scan or MRI (I forgot which one is
| which) based on symptoms
|
| - Person A gets the scan
|
| - Doctor evaluates results and says to book surgery in a
| hospital ASAP as it's probably cancerous
|
| - Person A books surgery
|
| - Hospital gives prep instructions to be performed by Person
| A 48 hours before surgery
|
| - Person A does everything and goes in for surgery
|
| - Person A is prepped for surgery and is put under anesthesia
|
| - Surgeon comes in and looks at the scan in the operating
| room
|
| - Surgeon says this scan is nothing to worry about and surely
| doesn't warrant surgery and it's not a tumor or cancer
|
| - Person A is wondering how the surgery went after coming to
| from being put out
|
| - Nurse says no surgery was done and even she was able to
| look at the scan and see nothing was wrong
|
| - Person A is told to go home and wait 4-6 weeks to self heal
|
| So let's ignore thousands of dollars in bills (deductibles).
| All of this could have been avoided if someone actually
| looked at the results of the scan before going through the
| motions of putting someone under anesthesia and a massive
| amount of stress.
|
| That's only 1 of many stories. In another case someone I knew
| had their blood drawn twice in the hospital because the 2nd
| nurse didn't believe them when they said they just got their
| blood drawn by another nurse 10 minutes ago. The vials were
| literally next to them, about 3 arm's lengths away.
| sjg007 wrote:
| That sounds like malpractice but I dunno.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Over here in the UK they generally mean well, almost
| without fault every one of my specialists, doctors and
| nurses have been awesome.
|
| That said man do they fuck up, most recently was a fun one,
| I had a scheduled appointment, turned up for it, doctor was
| in his treatment room seeing patients, forgot to see me and
| went for lunch.
|
| I mean it's minor but I'd checked in, the computer had me
| as waiting but he'd looked at the list, not seen me and
| went for lunch - I spoke to the nurse told her I didn't
| mind waiting while he ate and she tracked him down, he was
| incredibly apologetic (unnecessarily so, shit happens).
|
| It's inevitable in a system as complex as healthcare that
| mistakes are going to be made but we probably should assess
| the proximal causes much like the airlines/plane
| manufacturers did to reduce the incidence.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Almost exactly the same thing happened to me (also in the
| UK), except rather than checking me in, they had
| transposed a couple digits on my NHS number and checked
| in a random person. Not sure if the NHS number has a
| check digit, and if not why not, but I digress...
|
| Rather than going to lunch, after I sat waiting for 3hrs
| they closed the department. When I went up to let them
| know I hadn't been seen yet, they apologised profusely,
| called back the specialist - who had already left - and
| saw me after closing time.
| martinmunk wrote:
| 100x more potent just means you will give 1/100 the dose for
| the same effect. Around here, fentanyl is used in ambulances.
| Biggest side effect is it can stop your breath if it's more
| than the dose given in lollipops (field-style first aid
| thing), so you have to keep an eye on the patient.
| trhway wrote:
| >Really seems like a "hey nurse did this patient have their
| fentanyl yet?" would have resolved this issue.
|
| i somehow think that a medical doctor should be able to tell
| whether a person has an opioid [at least in a pain relieving
| dose] in their system.
| klyrs wrote:
| This is one of the most pernicious aspects of the opioid
| crisis. Doctors are taught to be hypervigilant regarding
| "drug seeking behavior" which is pretty much a 1:1 list of
| behaviors of people whose suffering is "genuine." Number one
| criteria seems to be that the patient is requesting
| medication. In so many cases, the patient is the _most_
| reliable source of information... but when it comes to pain
| management, the patient is not to be trusted.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| > Doctors are taught to be hypervigilant regarding "drug
| seeking behavior" which is pretty much a 1:1 list of
| behaviors of people whose suffering is "genuine."
|
| Slate Star Codex wrote about this:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-
| pseudo...
|
| Basically, an addict wants to look genuine, so a lot of
| genuine patients have to put up with stuff designed to cut
| off addicts. Like the scary "FBI warning" that only shows
| up if you actually pay for a DVD.
| [deleted]
| corobo wrote:
| I understand where they're coming from but could they not
| loosen the rules for the person who has a clearly visible
| injury?
|
| Could they not check the chart? Is there even a chart
| anymore?
| klyrs wrote:
| There's plenty of chart, but far more hubris. In my
| experience, everybody _writes_ in charts, but the rare
| doctor who reads them is a saint.
| akiselev wrote:
| Our attempts at solving the problem even seems to drive the
| expert doctors who are actually qualified to do so out of
| the field. The prescription mills force heavy handed
| regulations that spook the insurers and hospital legal
| teams, which leaves two extremes: on the one hand are
| doctors who can't empathize with the patient and are super
| strict with any sort of scheduled medication and on the
| other are doctors whose offices don't see enough patients
| taking those drugs (or even a single problematic case), so
| they neither know nor care about the risks and give the
| drug out freely. Since their numbers are so low, no one
| thinks to bring up the issue.
|
| The doctors who are most qualified in making the
| determination are often the ones with the most legitimate
| patients taking those drugs but all the legal teams and
| regulators are completely incapable of differentiating them
| from the prescription mills (excuse me, "pain management
| centers").
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You should complain to the medical board. If the guy is too
| lazy to look at the chart, what else isn't he doing?
|
| I had spinal fusion and due to an unrelated issue ended up on
| the medical floor instead of the neurologist floor overnight. I
| had zero pain medication after a significant surgery and
| couldn't sleep. The floor nurse and useless hospitalist
| straight up accused me of attempting to get pills.
|
| The surgeon came to do rounds in the morning and was visibly
| shocked, and the overnight bozos didn't do other stuff, because
| they never _read_ the orders.
| mncharity wrote:
| Doctors, surgeons in particular, are both project manager and
| individual contributor. At peak IC work load, the manager role
| gets starved for cycles. A failure to track "X was intended -
| did it actually happen?" is a typical of this.
|
| Having someone with you can help. "He's right, Doctor, the
| nurse hasn't yet ...". A role of maintaining a clear picture of
| project state, making sure everyone is on the same page, and
| more.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| That's true and it's only recently that I realized the
| importance of it. It's imperious that patients be accompanied
| by a loved one or someone they can trust to look out for
| their interests and provide an adversarial viewpoint to the
| medical staff. Patients who are gravely injured/sick can not
| advocate for themselves and doctors will not listen.
|
| I was recently hospitalized after an accident and was unable
| to have any family with me because of covid measures. As a
| result I received the worst medical care I've ever
| experienced. Including but not limited to: waiting 8 hours in
| the ER with four broken limbs and no painkillers, having
| procedures done with no painkillers that required them, being
| given dangerous dosages of drugs because of a
| miscommunication between teams despite my protests, having
| sequels from surgeries that were never addressed by the
| medical team and that I was too high to ask about, having to
| program my own medical bed so that it'd stop shaking my
| broken limbs after 5 hours of unanswered pleading with the
| staff, having to solve severe complications from the drugs
| with the help of my family doctor, not eating anything for a
| week without anybody getting worried... I could go on. I'd
| experienced similar issues during previous hospital stays,
| these sort of things happen regularly in hospitals, but I
| always had someone trustworthy with me to point them out and
| make a fuss before they became real problems.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| This is a really long winded way of being apologetic about
| bad practice.
|
| Patients lie all the time, but if a patient warns them they
| have received no pain medication or muscle relaxants or
| whatever, then their job was to check their medical record or
| with the staff nurse if it was true or not. Any other
| argument is a distraction.
| mncharity wrote:
| Consider "Weather is bad all the time. It's the pilot's job
| to run that checklist as written. Then this (hypothetical)
| plane wouldn't crash so often. Any other argument is a
| distraction."
|
| In UX design, there's "stupid users, they keep doing it
| wrong", versus seeking to understand user errors and
| prevent them. In medicine, with medical error a leading
| cause of national death, those are blaming individuals,
| versus seeking to understand errors, and systemically
| reduce their prevalence.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I get it, but in this case it is the DOCTOR basically
| thinking "stupid users". Nobody was endangered, the
| patient was just put in a heck of a lot of pain because
| the doctor assumed they were lying or wrong and it wasn't
| even worth checking, because their pain didn't matter
| that much to the doctor.
|
| The hospital is a PRIME place for systems meant to avoid
| mistakes. (Although your example with checklists and
| pilots is odd; the checklist IS such a system, a
| remarkably successful one. And over the last 10 years, is
| used more often in hospitals too. I guess you _could_ say
| that every checklist should have TWO people check it off
| or something, but it 's such successful technology at
| reducing mistakes I'm not sure I've seen this suggested).
|
| But no system can make up for doctors who don't respect
| patients or care about their pain.
| mncharity wrote:
| Sorry I was unclear. In aviation, the distinction between
| "blame the pilot" and "determine root causes, so we can
| work to prevent recurrence" is relatively well known. So
| say, a recurrent checklist failure, might prompt
| checklist improvement, rather than merely blaming pilots.
| Say shortening a landing checklist by moving items to a
| less tense approach checklist.
|
| So I attempted to illustrate by analogy, that describing
| a common reason _why_ something happens, isn 't mere
| distraction. Here, it seems possible that head-down
| engagement in physical manipulation, might have been a
| distraction from care management.
|
| It will be interesting to see AR attempt to blend medical
| records with point of care. To see the patient, is to see
| their status. To administer an injection, is to have it
| logged. But yeah, culture change is core, and hard. And
| tech doesn't provide great leverage on that yet.
| scubbo wrote:
| I take your point, but this is absolutely not it. The
| commenter above you is saying that, if the "checklist
| item" for a doctor who is told by a patient "I didn't get
| pain medication yet" is not "verify that information",
| then the checklist _itself_ is wrong and needs to be
| changed. There's minimal negative impact (a delay to
| treatment if the patient was lying) and huge positive
| impact (avoiding doing a procedure without appropriate
| pain medication)
| salimmadjd wrote:
| _They found that half of the patients who fell from the height I
| did - 18.2 metres_
|
| Some high school physics:
|
| s = 1/2 at^2 about 1.98 sec of free fall time.
|
| v = at which gives us about 43 mph of impact velocity.
|
| There was a time I was a volunteer at the SF General ER room when
| I was considering going to the medical school.
|
| We had a guy who fell from a 5 story parking lot that survived
| with a broken foot. The police came and he wouldn't say what had
| happened and the whispers behind the ER room was he was probably
| pushed but he is afraid to speak.
|
| When the ER doctor came to examine him, the doctor asked about
| two other old scars.
|
| What is this scar? I was stabbed once. What is this other scar? I
| was shot once.
|
| Yep, talk about nine lives.
| mncharity wrote:
| TFA mentions a key bit at the end: landing on, and crushing,
| two plastic milk crates. Crumple zone.
| pixelkritzel wrote:
| So basically the headline is misleading.
|
| This is the teeniest way a potential deadly fall can change your
| life.
| lumberingjack wrote:
| Working in residential construction since the 1980s I've seen
| several people fall from that height. None of them injured all of
| them were not direct falls most of them were scrapes along walls.
| I've also seen way more people fall from step ladders two or
| three feet tall and get injured worse. One case in the early 90s
| a painter exterior work about 32 ft tall fell from maybe 26 ft
| his primary concern was not spilling his paint landed in a koi
| pond on his butt didn't spill the drop of paint.
| Tronno wrote:
| Reading this gives me flashbacks of my own fall from about 45
| feet, which broke my spine, pelvis, and ankle.
|
| The initial days after the surgery were confusing, painful, and
| scary. If the fractures had been another half inch to the right,
| I would have been paralyzed for life.
|
| Indeed, I lost control over my bowel functions, and for a few
| agonizing days was unclear if I would ever get them back. I
| learned how to insert my own catheter to avoid the embarassment
| of having it done for me.
|
| The following weeks were spent wheelchair-bound in a rehab
| facility, where each day brought surreal new challenges, but also
| small increments of progress. A year later, all bodily functions
| have been restored, with only minor limitations.
|
| If you have also been struck by disaster, and narrowly escaped by
| sheer miracle, you will understand the intense gratitude and
| sense of purpose that one is filled with in such circumstances.
|
| Gratitude for all the little things that were almost taken away
| forever - wiggling your toes, playing a sport, walking to the
| store, using the toilet unassisted. Gratitude for all the help,
| care, and healing from medical staff, without which life would be
| awful and pointless.
|
| And a deep sense of purpose, as you realize how short and fragile
| that life is. It is a powerful reminder to learn, build, and grow
| while you still have the resources and opportunity.
|
| I think about it less as time goes on, but sometimes I will see
| the ground rushing at me, or glimpse a flash of the life I almost
| had... and it keeps me on my toes.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| Do you mind sharing how that influenced your sense of purpose?
| iab wrote:
| A sharp reminder for us all. Thanks for sharing.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My father served in the 8th Air Force at a time when the odds
| of completing a tour were about 20%. The airmen had various
| ways of coping with this, my father's way was to simply accept
| that he wasn't going to make it and just do his job as best he
| could.
|
| He told me that after the war, whenever he felt down, he'd
| think about what a miracle it was he survived, and would feel
| better.
|
| He lived to be 93.
| chadd wrote:
| Interestingly, the way the survivors have reckoned with it in
| the past 10-15 years at the end of their life was to build a
| number of monuments to their units at the 8th air force
| museum in Georgia. It's worth a visit.
| Dahoon wrote:
| After i was cured from cancer I also got another look on life.
| One thing I did was get a motorcycle again and I left my
| girlfriend. Better to enjoy life right now than live in the
| future (dreaming of when/if). Now I got another girlfriend and
| know real love and ride motorcycles with her. Wish I woke up
| earlier though but better late than never!
| garciasn wrote:
| A neighbor fell four stories through a burned out building and
| endured years of pain and depression which drove severe
| alcoholism (3.5L of vodka daily) and eventual suicide.
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