Suicide Is Drainless
Aug. 22nd, 2002 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lederhosen(with mucho apologies for the title.)
One consequence of having a med student as a brother - currently doing his time in Emergency - is that I get to hear all sorts of weird stuff, including this one. Happened where he was working, although he wasn't involved in the case himself.
The woman in question had run herself a bath, climbed in, and overdosed on antidepressants. She fell unconscious, and the water temperature slowly dropped. When she was found, two days later, her core temperature was measured at around 22 Celsius (72 Fahrenheit, for those across the Big Water.)
So, how did she die?
As the body cools, the mechanisms that keep the heart beating begin to fail. A few degrees below normal it speeds up, trying to restore normality; a little colder, and it slows right down; colder than that, and it's likely to go into fibrillation. Chilling reduces the body's demand for oxygen, which helps, but it doesn't eliminate it.
But then, prolonged immobility can be fatal all on its own. When pressure is placed on the same areas of the body for extended periods of time, the circulation suffers. Clots develop. Tissue loses its oxygen supply, because the blood can't get through - even if the heart _is_ beating - and it dies. This is why you move around in your sleep, and why comatose patients have to be moved regularly.
But in this case, floating in water, she was cushioned well enough that the clots didn't develop. And - I don't know the pharmacology involved, sorry - the antidepressants kept her heart going, slowly but regularly, despite the cold. Two things that ought to have killed her mitigated one another, and so she survived.
There are several possible morals here, but I'll go with the medical one: you're not dead until you're warm and dead
One consequence of having a med student as a brother - currently doing his time in Emergency - is that I get to hear all sorts of weird stuff, including this one. Happened where he was working, although he wasn't involved in the case himself.
The woman in question had run herself a bath, climbed in, and overdosed on antidepressants. She fell unconscious, and the water temperature slowly dropped. When she was found, two days later, her core temperature was measured at around 22 Celsius (72 Fahrenheit, for those across the Big Water.)
So, how did she die?
As the body cools, the mechanisms that keep the heart beating begin to fail. A few degrees below normal it speeds up, trying to restore normality; a little colder, and it slows right down; colder than that, and it's likely to go into fibrillation. Chilling reduces the body's demand for oxygen, which helps, but it doesn't eliminate it.
But then, prolonged immobility can be fatal all on its own. When pressure is placed on the same areas of the body for extended periods of time, the circulation suffers. Clots develop. Tissue loses its oxygen supply, because the blood can't get through - even if the heart _is_ beating - and it dies. This is why you move around in your sleep, and why comatose patients have to be moved regularly.
But in this case, floating in water, she was cushioned well enough that the clots didn't develop. And - I don't know the pharmacology involved, sorry - the antidepressants kept her heart going, slowly but regularly, despite the cold. Two things that ought to have killed her mitigated one another, and so she survived.
There are several possible morals here, but I'll go with the medical one: you're not dead until you're warm and dead
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So, how did she die?
Date: 2002-08-21 11:50 pm (UTC)Re: So, how did she die?
Date: 2002-08-22 05:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-22 12:04 am (UTC)(scribbles details for Evil Yelyena)
wow
Re: wow
Date: 2002-08-22 08:08 pm (UTC)Re: wow
Date: 2002-08-23 08:18 pm (UTC)(You know I'm just making conversation for the heck of it.)
Re: wow
Date: 2002-08-23 11:07 pm (UTC)