[flagged]
My dad could still be alive, but he's not
61–70 of 328 posts
Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not
#62It is terrible to lose a relative in young age.
But at least 80% percent of all heart diseases are known to be fully avoidable. The risk factors are known for ages and as matter of fact every adult is fully responsible to care for his own health. The right thing to do, is to watch out for a healthy diet.
Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not
#63Such a tragedy, and I'm really not surprised it happened in Canada. Our healthcare system here is utter garbage and there isn't really any political will to do anything about it because "it's better than the Americans at least" (it's not). I don't buy that it's underfunded either, it's just sorely mismanaged and nobody wants to build or grow. Even a child could tell you if you increase the population of a country by 10% in ten years, you also need to grow its infrastructure by at least that amount - but our political class are idiots and haven't even considered it. After all it's not "green" to build more hospitals. And thus we get situations like this where there literally aren't enough ambulances to handle the load.
I'm sorry if I'm ranting under a post about a father's passing, but tragedies like this are so avoidable that it practically sends me into a rage. This person should still be alive, she should still have her father. Fuck sakes.
Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not
#64My sincere condolences to the author. Wishing you strength and peace. I once saw a man have a heart attack on the beach, less than a 5 minutes drive from a fire-station and rescue team. A helicopter arrived after 45 minutes, and the man was deceased already. That was in Martinique, french Caribbean. There's a need for an app to let patients track the ambulance. It's been possible for 10+ years, as seen with Uber. It…
> There's a need for an app to let patients track the ambulance I don't want to blame anyone, but I'm pretty sure that kind of visibility is not desired.
Not desired by whom? I think transparency is desired by citizens/customers.
Do you think there are (good) reasons why obscurity is preferred?
Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not
#65My condolences, very sorry for your loss. I work as an EMT (911) and resourcing is certainly a problem. In my small city, our response time is around 5 minutes, and if we need to upgrade to get paramedics, that’s maybe another 5-10. However, if we are out on a call, out of service, or the neighboring city is on a call, now the next closest unit is 15+ minutes away.. sometimes there can just be bad luck in that nearby…
Does this mean that someone having a likely heart attack should have someone drive them to an ER in advance of paramedics arriving?
Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not
#66This is a very tragic story and my heart goes out to the family. It's one I've seen a few times now and hear about on a very regular basis from my coworkers.
I am a Canadian Paramedic (EMR soon to be PCP in a few months, roughly equivalent to EMT and AEMT respectively). Some things strike out at me:
- Here in BC our calltakers can advise patients on some treatments. I'm sure if that were to happen here, they would have advised the family to administer some ASA (Aspirin) to the patient which would have bought valuable time until professional care could be reached. Even if it was found to be contraindicated, the fact it was not mentioned in the blog post stands out to me.
- I'm not familiar with the geography of Toronto or its normal traffic patterns, but it's surprising that a single ambulance was not 30 minutes from the patient driving lights and sirens at that time of night (shortly after dinner).
- Fire crews here in BC are dispatched to severe medical incidents (like heart attacks) and most of the time can even beat ambulance crews to a scene. They would have been able to provide CPR if needed, possibly even ASA or Nitro depending on their scope. So again it's surprising that there's no mention of them. Perhaps they aren't dispatched to medical calls in Toronto?
- Lastly it's surprising that the calltaker had no visibility on where the dispatched crews were at. At the very least they could have radioed the crew to get an ETA. I guess I just take it for granted that over here we are tracked as soon as we sign in to our vehicle (it's a safety thing especially in some of our more rural/remote stations). If the ambulance was just about to reach the patient right before the family decided to go to the hospital on their own, things might have turned out differently.
Also since I'm assuming that a large percentage of HN readers are older males who are at risk of a heart attack (due to factors like working desk jobs and not keeping up with fitness as much), read up on the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and keep a bottle of aspirin at the ready. Bodies are complicated and weird and you never know.
Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not
#67>family members were too naive to know that the thing they were instructed to do by the state was a false thing Would be interesting to see everyone who jumped in here yesterday [1] to comment on this one as well. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45889297
The problem with Canada and the USA is that there's no educated ideology primed to capture the inherent distrust people have of systems that used to work and now don't, such as government authority. People should absolutely question authority basically all of the time. Authority should be justifying its competence to tell you what you should be doing with every decision it hands down. But there's nobody on the other…
>Authority should be justifying its competence to tell you what you should be doing with every decision it hands down.
1,000%
Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not
#68>my dad is dead, because his family members were too naive to know that the thing they were instructed to do by the state was a false thing. We're told a lot of things by "officials" not because it's correct, but because it holds the least legal liability for official parties involved, especially anything involving healthcare. These officials also sometimes include doctors, who work to protect themselves and the syst…
> We're told a lot of things by "officials" not because it's correct
What needs to be understood is that no rule can be so well written that there are no exceptions. Rules are guides. Understanding this we can understand why certain guidelines are created, because they are likely the right response 9/10 times. This is especially important when dealing with high stress and low information settings.
BUT being statistically correct does not mean correct. For example, if the operator had information about the ETA of the ambulance (we don't know this!) then the correct answer would have been to tell them to not wait. But if the operator had no information, then the correct decision is to say to wait.
The world is full of edge cases. This is a major contributor to Moravec's paradox and why bureaucracies often feel like they are doing idiotic things. Because you are likely working in a much more information rich environment than the robot was designed for or the bureaucratic rules were. The lesson here is to learn that our great advantage as humans is to be flexible. To trust in people. To train them properly but also empower them to make judgement calls. It won't work out all the time, but doing this tends to beat the statistical rate. The reason simply comes down to "boots on the ground" knowledge. You can't predict every situation and there's too many edge cases. So trust in the people you're already putting trust into and recognize that in the real world there's more information to formulate decisions. You can't rule from a spreadsheet no more than you can hike up a mountain with only a map. The map is important, but it isn't enough.
Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not
#69My condolences, very sorry for your loss. I work as an EMT (911) and resourcing is certainly a problem. In my small city, our response time is around 5 minutes, and if we need to upgrade to get paramedics, that’s maybe another 5-10. However, if we are out on a call, out of service, or the neighboring city is on a call, now the next closest unit is 15+ minutes away.. sometimes there can just be bad luck in that nearby…
Is it recommended to take or give aspirin ASAP before the EMTs arrive? If so, I wonder if the dad took it.
Yes you could (assuming no allergies or gi bleeds) and just inform the incoming EMTs
Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're also told to do a lot of things by officials because it's correct most of the time, but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, generally correct advice can turn out to be dead wrong for you. Sometimes doing what you're told is the right thing. Sometimes, not doing what you're told is the right thing. Sometimes, you're told to do the intuitive thing, and it's wrong. Sometimes, you're told to do the unintuitive thi…
Perhaps 2020 hindsight, even.
The 2020, in hindsight was largely correct. COVID was a highly infectious disease, it put a lot of people in the hospital, and a lot of people in the morgue. Social distancing and wearing masks slowed its spread, until an effective, safe vaccine was developed. Horse paste was not a cure for it, and after further investigation it turns out that it only had a positive effect on patients who, in addition to having COVID, also had worms. (To the surprise of absolutely everyone, it turned out that giving de-wormer to people with worms improved their health.)
For some reason, chronic contrarians always to point at a few details that were gotten wrong during the fog of war, and shout from the rooftops that if only they were in charge, we'd all be living in castles made of candy and shitting rainbows.
Joke's on us, though, those contrarians have since made a moron who doesn't believe in germs... The Secretary of Health.