is there anything we can learn from this?
There are three things I believe!? Life is more fragile than we want to accept and we should cherish the days and experiences we are given, tomorrow isn't guaranteed, and there is a God.
Amen to all three, and I too thank you for your service to our country.
Svend - I have been busy, but here is my take based on 14 years of seeing trauma in the ER.? She had an epidural bleed.? These are very tricky and can fool even experienced MDs.? Usual scenario - person falls and hits head and has a brief loss of consciousness (LOC).? They seem ok for 15 - 60 minutes and then rapidly go down the toilet right in front of you.? At that point they need to be in the operating room with a neurosurgeon ASAP, like 5 minutes ago.? If they are not in a hospital already the result is usually pretty grim, permanent brain injury or death.?
Helmets are like seatbelts.? They guarantee nothing.? You still have to have it properly fit, you need to drive carefully, and in very rare cases, they hold you in a car that gets crushed or blows up.? But for every time that happens, there are 100 times that people live because they were held inside the car.
I have seen a young women who had a fender bender, fall out of her car and hit the pavement with her head.? This was a very low speed accident, a couple of hundred dollars of damage to the car.? Her injury was probably very much like the actress with contact with ice (this is my strong suspicion)? She came in and was already in trouble.? We called the helicopter from Wake Forest University and did all we could to get her ready for surgery, 20min later they swooped in and swooped out.? I told her family to be prepared to be asked for organ donation and told them to pray - that she would need more help than I or the folks at WFU could really give.? AMAZINGLY - she walked in to thank us several weeks later.? Just in case anyone thinks I'm bragging - I quoted Jim for a reason, I think it had more to do with Grace than anything else, even though our resuscitation went amazingly smoothly (more grace).? Sometimes things go great and people live, sometimes they die.? Other times nothing goes right and people still live.....and sometimes they die and you ask of yourself and your staff hard questions.?
Sorry for the long tangent - here's the quirky human part.? When my family started skiing, I had my kids wear helmets and I wore a really great Mountain Hardware hat.? As a bald man, I had wonderful appreciation for that hat.? After experiencing what is above, I wore a hat for a little over a year, before switching to a helmet because I suspected that my head would be cold.? Sometimes we just aren't very consistent!!!!!!!!!? I wouldn't ski without a helmet now.
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