a reply to:
Neopan100
Neo, I am terribly sorry to hear of your family's loss of your brother
I can only imagine how that felt for you and your family, and am thankful at least the doctors and emergency personnel made a true and concerted
effort to save his life. Regardless of being a first responder or not, I always assumed/hoped that
anyone with any kind of training or
knowledge would at least attempt to help their fellow human being, especially when it's a child we're talking about.
Even seeing someone else's child deceased for the first time was a life changing experience for me, and I don't think you ever truly get over it. I
can't imagine simply forgiving an evil individual who heartlessly took someone else's life (especially 20 innocent children and 6 upstanding adults)
but I suppose to each is their own.
When I saw the Parker video, I had to question how someone could even find the strength inside to muster a smile, let alone a laugh. The recording
that appears to show him "psyching himself up" was also very curious, because it seems to me those tears would come very naturally/easily. I guess
everyone grieves in their own way, which is why the "community" type response of forgiveness was a little out of place, to me anyhow.
My personal experience in dealing with distraught parents - people who's whole world was taken away from them in the blink of an eye - is that they do
not ever get over that pain and sadness fully. For all ~40 parents to have similar reactions is definitely not the typical expected outcome. Perhaps
after 20 years of treatment/grieving, but certainly not 20 days or 20 hours.
I don't want to use other people's tragedies to illustrate my point, but in the first SIDS case I ever worked the boy's mother couldn't even stand on
her own. She was looking pretty bad, and hospital staff actually wanted to bring her into a room as a patient herself. However, she declined that in
order to be with her child during an unimaginable and totally surreal time.
EDIT: Neo, you are probably right in your belief that he had already passed on at that point. Even after just a few minutes without oxygen (unless in
freezing water for instance) the chances of resuscitating someone drops at roughly 10%/minute. I have no doubt that your dad, you and everyone else
involved did absolutely everything humanly possible to save him. It sounds like you guys did everything right, and sadly sometimes it isn't enough.
But for your own sake/sanity, you have to know you did the absolute best you could and I am certain you did.
The only arrests I have ever had survive were those we witnessed either on scene or in the back of the truck. Especially with cardiac arrest from
ventricular fibrillation, which is usually very treatable and very survivable if the patient has access to early defibrillation (like within 2-3
minutes of the arrest). Sadly, for non-witnessed arrests, we were always "too little too late" with a ~10 minute response time. CPR does a great job
at circulating oxygenated blood, keeping someone viable for ALS drugs and procedures, which have a minimal to moderate rate of success depending on
the actual cause of the pulselessness/apnea.
You would have never guessed those people had a "0%" chance of survival by our actions, though. Our truck was completely tore up on the inside, with
wrappers and random caps/items thrown in the door well area next to the bench seat. Despite "already being gone" we followed protocol to the letter,
and established a patent airway with ET intubation, one of us started bagging and the other would start compressions or secure TWO IV lines (usually
EJ sticks, sometimes used L/R AC space if nothing else available) to ensure we can give ALS drugs at the right time and that we don't blow any veins
and lose our drug route.
It is mind blowing to me that EMS would have gotten a stand down order from the SRT medics on scene, instead of this:
"In accordance with our MCI protocol, all patients have been triaged and ambulances XXX, XXX and XXX can head to the scene from the staging area to
pick up "Immediate/Critical" patients."
Mass casualty incident protocols are partially derived from NIMS (a national thing FEMA made all first responders do ~2009) and partially from local
protocol. One thing they all have in common is a 60 second period to evaluate each patient, correct any airway positional issues and control major
bleeding. During that 60 seconds, you follow a flow-chart that determines what "tag" status a patient in an MCI gets. We used Green: Walking
wounded/minor injuries, Yellow: Delayed/injured but no immediate life or limb threat, Red: Immediate/critical, transport immediately and Black:
deceased. Squads in the staging area would have been moved to the scene to transport/treat all Red tags first, then yellow tags. Green tags would walk
out on their own, and self-ambulate to a hospital or wait at the "green area" until reds and yellows were taken care of and transported. Black tags
would be transported in accordance with local policy on deceased patients.
All states and jurisdictions have some form of MCI mass casualty incident protocols. A stand-down order does not factor in to any of those. Once the
triage was complete (hint: no one ever says They're all dead!), ambulances leave staging and transport. After transport, they go back in service
(restock/cleaning) and report back to staging for further assignments from incident commander.
These events may be traumatic, but they are far from total anarchy & chaos. These are trained and well rehearsed professionals. An MCI by definition
is any incident that exceeds the resources immediately available to the incident commander. In my state, each ambulance required at least one tech and
one driver certified to a minimum level. Since there were 27 victims, 54 personnel on 27 ambulances would be needed making this 100% an
MCI
edit on 10/26/2017 by JBurns because: (no reason given)