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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   32334 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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The leg has massive arteries to power those big running muscles. Despite what various war and action movies might tell you, you slice one of those and you bleed out fast. That’s also why the arguments that police should be shooting to wound are laughable.

Bystanders desperately tried to assist the injured man as emergency services raced to the scene.

Mr Baitson was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery.

However, he died four days later.

Stranger things have happened, but dying four days after a leg wound is certainly up there IMO. I'd think you would either die in a few minutes or get enough help to recover, but maybe there's a middle ground.

This is often not the case and is counterintuitive for many.

I recall when I was a student, an ICU consultant asked us to guess whether most people who go to ICU die from the initial resuscitation or escalation of intensive treatment; the time during of intensive treatment; or the time when we try to step down patients from intensive care; he was impressed at the few of us who guessed the last. Turns out we’re quite good at maintaining signs of life with technology, even as we are helpless to fix an otherwise nonviable body — at least if you’re stable enough to get into ICU and didn’t have your chest caved in by a bus.

This probably makes more sense once you try to guess about how often ICU doctors have to have difficult family meetings with patients’ families about withdrawing life support, versus patients dying while on life support.

A common pathway for something like this is:

-you nearly bleed out

-medical attention arrives

-in the meantime multiple organs are not getting enough blood and therefor oxygen

-this may include the brain

-you are taken to the hospital which keeps you alive

-but you are already dead OR

-while in the hospital swelling, tissue death, infection from all of the damaged areas causes problems leading to formal death later

tons of stuff like this can happen.

The middle ground is modern medicine is good enough to save people who 10 years ago would have been pronounced dead almost immediately upon arriving at the hospital, but even fully replacing a humans blood capacity several times over can't save them from brain death.

Can stabilize somebody at a point that's essentially at death's door but ultimately not be able to achieve sufficient resuscitation

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