181–190 of 201 posts
An uncle of mine was in a situation like this once. He was sitting in first class and had to tend to someone in economy class. He decided that it would be best that he stayed by the man he was tending to so my uncle swapped seats with the man's wife. They gave him a bottle of wine for his help but I would have expected something more.
There was an older fellow who had a heart condition for which he was taking medication. His reasoning had gone something like "I need to take one of these pills four times a day, but I'll be traveling, so I'll just take all four of them right before checking in". Needless to say, this didn't work very well, and he was having sort of issue with his heart as a result. The poor guy was so scared he literally shit himself.
My friend actually had to make the call whether we needed to land on an airport in Greenland to get the guy to a hospital. He thought about it for a minute and decided that the guy was going to live, so we continued to Amsterdam, where an ambulance was waiting.
As a "thank you" from KLM, my friend was allowed in the cockpit during landing (this was before 9/11), and he got a bag full of little bottles of alchoholic beverages. Unfortunately, he's a teetotaller.
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#1 would probably be asking for a pilot. There have been a number of tests on simulators, and pilots licensed for smaller aircraft have a surprisingly low chance of being able to land a commercial jet.
I have heard someone tell a story about that happening once. They said that the cabin crew announced that they would be playing a game; they would call out an item, and give a free drink to the first person who could find that in their carry on. The first couple of items were fairly standard things; "a fountain pen", "a camera", etc. Then they got to "a commercial pilots license". Someone actually did raise their han…
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Why would a diabetic person not travel with insulin?
Many diabetics don't KNOW that they are.
Diabetics experience a "honeymoon" period where they will experience some symptoms - almost always enough to trigger a trip to their PCP, urgent care, ED, etc. where they will be diagnosed and put on a treatment plan.
At most they will experience one event of being "very sick" if they don't get checked out at all during the months-long honeymoon before its found.
If most diabetics didn't know they were diabetic, most diabetics would be dead.
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Out of hospital CPR has very slim survival chances. Being on a plane will result in at least 30 minutes of CPR even before an ambulance can take over. Chances on surviving that are extremely low. Therefore I can see why the doctor on the plane decided not to perform CPR. I have a medical degree myself btw.
Depends where you are - In the area around the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, or in the Puget Sound, return of spontaneous circulation rates can approach 40+% for witnessed treatable arrythmias.
If you are interested in medical "hacks" on long-distance flights, the award has to go to two doctors who were on a 1995 British Airways flight from Hong Kong to London when a patient had trouble breathing. They determined that the patient suffered a collapsed lung, so they made an incision in her chest, and used a coat hanger, brandy, and a tube from a medical kit to drain the lung. As I recall the story, there was…
This article has a bit more detail about the procedure itself; it mentions the flight attendants assisting, but no nurse: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199...
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Would not they check the passenger list for Dr's first? I remember being told that this was an occupational hazard for Phd's that you might be assumed to be a MD Dr.
As a physician and government traveler, the online booking service never asks for my title, and even if it did, I'd have to choose: Dr/MD? LCDR/USN/MC? Most identities online don't require a title and I don't offer. It only induces spam.
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I must admit, some secret part of me always hopes I'll be in a situation on an airplane where they need an emergency perl script written On a flight from Sydney to Vancouver earlier this year, the in-flight entertainment system on my plane was broken. I spoke up: "Hi, I have a doctorate in computer science and I know a bit about these systems... want me to take a look?" I was surprised when they agreed, brought me up…
Don't leave us hanging :) What was the problem?
I considered sending DHCP responses to the server myself, but decided that injecting traffic would be too risky during flight... especially since I was flying back from a conference where one of the speakers had been talking about inadequate firewalling between IFE systems and aeronautical control systems.
Sometimes they will put a blanket over the body, sometimes they will pretend that the person is sleeping. Depending on the situation.
I don't really get into the details but that's the scoop.
=)