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Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

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101–110 of 148 posts

Re: Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you, I also unfortunately have experiences with that. It has profoundly changed my view on living, especially how I want to be treated when someday I'm heavily sick. A family member in a coma takes a heavy toll on you, emotionally and financially. They are simultaneously there and not there. If they did not write down how they want to be treated you can never make a decision where you are sure what's right, or…

> For me, the decision is clear: when I'm not able to make my own decisions turn everything off and let me die. And what if you might be able to make decisions again tomorrow. Or the day after? Or in two weeks time.. ? These things are never all that 'clear'.

In my written will I have defined a clear timeframe. If I have not recovered by a measurable amount (GCS) in a timeframe of 4 weeks, it's time for me to go.

Edit: note this might be different for you. You are the only one who can make that call. You can also decide that you want to be kept alive as long as possible. But then at least your loved ones know that that's what you wanted.

Re: Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

#102

I'd be curious to read about 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 year follow-up. Party pooper warning. I'm afraid I don't have rose tinted glasses, due to personal experience with a family member with TBI (accident at age 16, 3 weeks in a coma). The aftereffects are profoundly destabilizing to his environment. I sometimes have quite a dark view of people's need to be a rescuer and celebrate the "alive!", when they don't have to deal wit…

One of my children nearly drowned in the bathtub. She was already unconscious and floating on the water. She had stopped breathing. My wife (who was sitting only 3 meters away in the living room and had talked to her the minutes before) revived her. She made a full recovery in the hospital. I agree in principle. But: the aftereffects of nearly losing a child were already quite destabilizing to us, and still are, afte…

What you and your wife and indeed child went through was immense enough to be fair I think it is understandable to be destabalized.

Re: Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you are speaking to someone who has actually experienced this and you have not. Trying to be civil here, I'll phrase it like this: Try not to be so judgemental over a keyboard when you have no experience to speak from. Life is complicated.

The experience could easily run the other way around, you are doing the same thing you criticise.

But in a non judgemental way.

Re: Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

#104

Something similar happened recently in Norway. A tourist was found severely cold in the mountains, in a storm where extracting him took hours. After a while hypothermia got to him, his heart stopped, and only 8 hours later they got it starting again, was technically dead for 20 hours. In this case, it looks to have gone well with the person afterwards. They say you're not dead until you're warm and dead. News article…

Interesting to see that he was actively worked on for hours and hours. This is a very dedicated team, with significant awareness of hypothermia recovery.

It wouldn’t as much as an internist with too long of a day to call it after the third code.

Re: Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

#105
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my children nearly drowned in the bathtub. She was already unconscious and floating on the water. She had stopped breathing. My wife (who was sitting only 3 meters away in the living room and had talked to her the minutes before) revived her. She made a full recovery in the hospital. I agree in principle. But: the aftereffects of nearly losing a child were already quite destabilizing to us, and still are, afte…

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[deleted]

Re: Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

#106
post #60
post #45

> As the patient's temperature approached 22 °C (72 °F), low-frequency and low-amplitude sinusoidal electrical deflections were noted on his electrocardiogram. Dunno about you, but this does things to me.

Can you explain?

Not op, but imagine doing cpr to someone for more than an hour (btw this means multiple people taking turns because cpr is exhausting) and at some point there is a sign of feeble heart contractile activity (and hence life)

It must have been a very emotional moment for the rescuers and parents if present.

Edit: corrected typo

Re: Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but ultimatively it could been 16:43 to 18:57 which is 134 Minutes.

The first two reported timestamps are 16:00 and 16:30 which both fall conveniently on the half hour. This leads me to conclude that these are guesses, and could be either early or late. It seems most likely that the mother was not exactly aware of the time the child left the house. There is an incentive to minimise (to avoid it looking like a failure of supervision). What we are certain of is the 16:44 call to the EM…

Yes it's still more than 2 hours.

two hours underwater! that's insanity.

Re: Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

#108

As a layman, it’s kind of surprising that they attempted to CPR someone that long in this situation. If I pulled someone out of the water 2h after they went missing and they were cold to the touch, I would probably call the police and wouldn’t even ask for an ambulance.

Guidance in the UK is that you always attempt CPR with children and continue it until you get to hospital. This is mostly for the family. They have the knowledge that you did everything you could, and when the child is pronounced dead in hospital the family have a lot of support available in the hospital setting.

Re: Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

#109
post #104

Something similar happened recently in Norway. A tourist was found severely cold in the mountains, in a storm where extracting him took hours. After a while hypothermia got to him, his heart stopped, and only 8 hours later they got it starting again, was technically dead for 20 hours. In this case, it looks to have gone well with the person afterwards. They say you're not dead until you're warm and dead. News article…

Interesting to see that he was actively worked on for hours and hours. This is a very dedicated team, with significant awareness of hypothermia recovery. It wouldn’t as much as an internist with too long of a day to call it after the third code.

They had told the transport team not to rewarm him during the 70 minute flight, so there was no chance of him getting some “internist”. The hospital was fully prepared for the patient, which is why they survived.

Re: Ice water drowning survival of young patient (2025)

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or is it literally that the freezing and thawing can't happen evenly when you're too big? This. You literally can’t evaporate all the thawing agent out of the blood of the organism without substantial burns by sheer volume

That's really interesting, thank you - do you know how this was done, like in a practical sense?

Actually I got the timing wrong, it was the 50ies, but here you go:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1363505/

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