What it’s like to die

http://sashmackinnon.com/what-its-like-to-die

by joshbuckley • 13 years ago

250 132 13 years ago

sukuriant• 13 years ago

Just don't take your luck for granted... it's about that time that it's stripped out from you.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

I can certainly vouch for the suggestion that being grateful for the things you have (feeling lucky) is also a key component in my personal happiness quotient.

j_s• 13 years ago

Discussion of Dustin Curtis's perspective on this event: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4740540

A good reminder to make sure you have an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) nearby. (Make sure your company has one!)

http://gregaed.org/aed-basics/

vxNsr• 13 years ago

I was under the impression that in most states it's required in a gym...

graue• 13 years ago

This reminds me a bit of Mary Rose Cook's story, "When I died": http://maryrosecook.com/post/when-i-died-2

jemfinch5• 13 years ago

I'm (only a little bit) sorry to be so pedantic, but I've grown weary of this modern misuse of death for hyperbolic effect.

You didn't die. You weren't dead and you aren't now resurrected. You experienced a very serious medical event, and you almost died, but didn't. Even metaphorically, you didn't die: you're still around. Robert Pirsig can claim that Phaedrus died; you cannot, because you're still here.

I don't know why this small untruth bothers me so, but it really does.

gertef• 13 years ago

Because death is really serious business. Misinformation hurts.

hnriot2• 13 years ago

Also, it wood be nice if peepol proof readed there blogs a little more often two.

rosser7• 13 years ago

And their comments.

rosser7• 13 years ago

While I get the point you're trying to make, and even somewhat agree with it, there are two definitions of "death" in play. The problem isn't hyperbole; it's simply one of equivocating between them.

There's clinical death, which the author of TFA very likely did experience. If VF continues for anything longer than a few seconds, asystole frequently occurs. Among other things, asystole is definitive of "clinical death."

On the other hand, there's death death. This is the one where we bury you and mourn you and so-on.

Yes, they're very much not the same thing. Yes, the author is probably equivocating between them, at least a little. But no, his describing what he experienced as "death" is not hyperbolic — at least not according to the clinical definition.

jemfinch5• 13 years ago

> If VF continues for anything longer than a few seconds, asystole frequently occurs. Among other things, asystole is definitive of "clinical death."

This isn't true. VFib can persist for a long time (at least 20 minutes, maybe more). Furthermore, defibrillators aren't applied to an asystole heart. Nor do practitioners typically continue working after clinical death has been declared.

nova• 13 years ago

This is the real, real, real death:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death

The other "deaths" are just technical shortcomings due to lack of research.

at-fates-hands• 13 years ago

This past week I was listening to a paranormal radio show where they discussed these different definitions.

They claimed in the early 1800's people would be brought into large rooms after they had passed, and were put on tables until the corpse was literally rotting before burying them. This had to do with cultural fears of being buried alive and having people who were supposedly "dead" waking back up in their coffins.

It was a rather long, but very interesting discussion. I'll try and find the podcast.

baddox• 13 years ago

I quit my job yesterday. In the evening, I just walked out of my office and straight home. While at home, I did absolutely no work for my former employer. I was unemployed for more than twelve hours. Then this morning, I returned to work and am now employed again.

Trufa• 13 years ago

Unfair analogy, you could easily modify it to this:

You walk out your office because you were fired, your boss calls you at night because it was a mistake, you go back to work in the morning.

I'm not saying I disagree with your point. I don't think your analogy fits.

zachrose• 13 years ago

I was interested in what the author had to say about the experience of "dying," so I got what I paid for.

abecedarius3• 13 years ago

The paramedics arrived and walked slowly down the length of the pool to the gym. This was procedure, they later told me, they didn't want to run and cause alarm.

That shocks me a little.

abredow• 13 years ago

We talked about this in a CPR class once. The biggest reason paramedics don't run is to avoid injury, which would obviously impede their ability to help.

adamzerner3• 13 years ago

That makes sense if the area around the pool is slippery. It's just that given the tremendous downside of risking the victim's life or brain damage, it seems that the paramedics wouldn't be risking much by hustling a little, rather than "walking slowly".

Unless it was really slippery, or if they thought someone was going to flip out to the point where it seriously interfered with the CPR, taking your time doesn't seem like the best thing to do for the victim.

hnriot2• 13 years ago

What has happened to humans??? millions of years evolving to a truly miraculous level of efficiency and agility and we still don't think that possibly moving a little quickly to someone who's heart has stopped is a good idea? Since there were paramedics (plural) it wouldn't impede anything if they ran, and it would most certainly increase the chances of saving someone.

To me this is disgraceful, it sounds like OSHA got involved and made policy something that must surely be counter intuitive. Yes, I know the statistics of small risk- done often, but this is such a sad condition for our special to have reached when people carrying life saving equipment don't move a little faster to save someone.

1123581321• 13 years ago

To that I would add it gives them time to observe the scene and mentally begin work. It's not the same in seriousness, but when I was to solve an urgent IT problem I'd sit down, adjust the monitor, and roll up my sleeves before typing anything. And recently, when my baby son was falling down some stairs, I found myself calmly walking to the stairs and catching him right before he would have landed on his face. Looking back, I wondered why I didn't run since I love my son, but I realized that I might have slipped on the tile floor or dropped him in my haste.

adamzerner3• 13 years ago

Yeah, that means that people's propensity to panic results in the victim having to lose more precious seconds, which could easily result in brain damage or something.

saalweachter• 13 years ago

You're likely talking a 10 second delay. A typical non-Olympic sized swimming pool is about 25 yards. At 3 mph, that's about 19 seconds. At 6 mph, it's about 9 seconds, at 12 mph, 5 seconds.

10 seconds may be the difference between life and death, but it's also only 10 seconds. You can pick up and lose 10 seconds quite easily. If they drove from 1 mile away, 10 seconds is the difference between 35 and 40 mph, or 60 and 70 mph. They could have saved 50 seconds if they drove 70 instead of 35; should they have?

10 seconds can be the difference between life and death, but sometimes it's not. In this case, the temporarily deceased waited an extra 10 seconds an came through it with no lasting damage at all. I'm hoping that someone, somewhere did the math on this, and determined that haste causes more problems -- either when an EMT trips and falls and injures himself, or when an EMT trips and falls and ends up taking twice as long to reach the injured person anyway, or when the EMT rushes to the injured patient and forgets the AED in the ambulance, or when the EMT administers the wrong treatment in his haste -- than it solves.

Granted, if my loved one died 10 seconds before the EMTs arrived, I might have some lingering anger, and if I died while watching EMTs slowly, nonchalantly walk towards me, my dying thought might be "Fuuuuuuuck yoooooooou EMTs", but from the perspective of a detached observer it makes perfect sense.

abecedarius3• 13 years ago

My normal walking pace is 2 miles/hour (and I don't think I'm slow). That's about 1 yard/second, so 25 seconds at a normal pace, and the article said 'slowly'.

I don't know if they're doing the right thing for the patient or not; just that that was the surprising info in the article, for me.

bcoates• 13 years ago

People who deal with emergencies professionally, and especially their non-expert political bosses and their lawyers, spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about panicked reactions by the general public, a phenomenon that is almost entirely fictional.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/emergency_response/common_misconcep... (escape panic is rare; disaster shock is rare and short lived; public reaction to disasters is adaptive but might overwhelm unprepared public agencies expecting to be in control)

vacri6• 13 years ago

For the sake of 10 seconds, it is better to have a cool, collected paramedic arrive than a rushed and out of breath one. Keeping things calm and orderly rather than frantic is beneficial in an emergency situation.

sageikosa• 13 years ago

Poolside=wet surface; EMTs may not have been dishwashers in a previous life (where you learn the dishwasher shuffle for moving over wet surfaces). Doesn't surprise me they'd walk with care.

bentcorner• 13 years ago

At least with a pool, you'd want them to be careful. It is a slippery surface, and a fall could easily incapacitate an EMT, or destroy life-saving equipment.

Edit: As for walking in general, it could also be because they wouldn't want a crowd to form which could obstruct them should they need to evacuate you more quickly.

T(walking_now) + T(walking_later) < T(running_now) + T(moving_through_crowd_later)

cdjk• 13 years ago

"slow is smooth and smooth is fast"

jemfinch5• 13 years ago

Another reason paramedics are taught to walk around pools is simply to avoid slipping on wet floors. The additional speed isn't worth the increased risk of falling.

(Source: I was a certified EMT-Basic)

steven2012• 13 years ago

Somewhat related, but I remember watching MC Hammer on Oprah. Oprah was interviewing him about his bankruptcy, fall from grace, etc, and at one point, he said something to the effect of "Please, I don't want anyone to feel any sympathy towards me. Even after losing everything, my worst day is better than most people's best days. I'm still blessed."

It's really easy, especially in Silicon Valley, to fall into the "Poor Little Rich Boy" syndrome as well. I'm currently trying to buy a >$1M house in the Bay Area (very common), and have gotten outbid by $100k+ time and time again. One of my friends said "I heard you're having problems trying to get a house." My response, thinking exactly of that MC Hammer interview, was "Not having money to afford a place is a problem. Being in the position to be outbid on $1M houses is a really lucky."

I guess after reading the author's post, we in this industry should really feel blessed and know we're living a life that most people on this planet would think is a dream. It really puts things in perspective, and we hopefully shouldn't need a life-threatening event to come to this realization.

hello_newman2• 13 years ago

Totally agree. So many people would kill to be in the positions some of us are in to pursue opportunities, chase our dreams, and be able to participate in the current zeitgeist and contribute to the world.

If you can do that, you're already a success in my book.

jeromeparadis• 13 years ago

A more appropriate title would have been "What it's like to wake up after dying". Glad he's feeling great.

He's mainly lucky someone who know CPR was around soon after his cardiac failure. That's the main reason why he defied statistics and it stacked odds in his favor. Otherwise, more than 4 minutes before intervention and you're almost guaranteed to be dead or at least brain damaged.

mcmatterson• 13 years ago

I lost my dad last week to this exact same event. My parents live in the country, and my elderly mother didn't have the training (or lack of panic) to attempt CPR. Although members of the local volunteer fire department were on site within 7 minutes with an AED, I'm actually quite comforted in the knowledge that there never really was any hope for him. One of the few nice things about vfib is that it's quick and painless, and the grim survival statistics mean that there wasn't really anything that could have been done differently in my dad's case.

davidw• 13 years ago

Sorry to hear that:-(

davycro• 13 years ago

the iphone app pulsepoint is worth mentioning here. its designed to alert people with cpr training when a cardiac arrest occurs near them. if more people use this app them more people should survive this type of accident

JohnBooty• 13 years ago

  "If there is one lesson I took away from the experience it
  is not to “live life to the fullest” or “have no regrets”.    
  It is to feel lucky. Feeling lucky means you are
  appreciating the things in your life that sometimes go
  unnoticed. It means you are achieving more than think 
  you deserve. Feeling lucky requires a certain humility 
  we often lose sight of."

I came somewhat close to death due to something that happened with my heart once. Probably not as close as the author of the article, but definitely close enough to make one re-examine a few things.

For me, in addition to feeling lucky and grateful, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that it made me much less patient when dealing with unnecessary unpleasantries.

It's hard not to shout, "Really? I have to fill out this ridiculous form and then call so-and-so? Do you guys even KNOW how insanely short and fragile life is, and we're wasting it here talking about this ridiculous thing?"

I deal with the necessary unpleasantries a little better now than I did before. When one of the pets makes a mess on the floor, I can't say I really enjoy cleaning it up now - but I still have to think about how wonderful and lucky it is that the pet and I are both here.

csomar• 13 years ago

The author experienced Clinical Death[1] and not permanent death. However, it's interesting now that we are close to singularity, death may be no longer death.

What does it mean to die if I upload your brain and make another process of yourself? Is death related to the body or losing consciousness?

Finally, dying is like sleeping. You are not around when you are dead. The author certainly got a shock from the things that happened to him and the thoughts of not existing any more and not experiencing death per se.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death

eli_gottlieb2• 13 years ago

The sleep thing is a very bad argument on issues of death. I don't know about the rest of you, but I was always under the impression it's normal to drift in and out of various partial forms of consciousness immediately before, during, and after sleep. If dying was like sleeping, it would include the occasional moment of waking up to notice how comfortable your blanket is, roll over, and fall back adead.

What does it mean to die if I upload your brain and make another process of yourself? Is death related to the body or losing consciousness?

Well, that mostly depends on how you've defined "to die". I can easily imagine that the neo-Victorian Phyle will pass a law banning brain-copying after clinical death as an abomination, for instance. The thing about playing God is that you have to start writing your own rules.

krapp2• 13 years ago

What does it mean to die if I upload your brain and make another process of yourself? Is death related to the body or losing consciousness?

Assuming that something we will retroactively refer to as singlulary ever occurs, and that we are close to singluarity, and that it ever takes a form which leads to some kind of ubiquitous 'upload' of a brain model that somehow acts and reacts as a brain in a skull in meatspace would (and all of these qualifiers are debatable,) you still die.

In the future the notion of what it means to be alive, and human, and dead, may be reinterpreted so that these models are considered to be, essentially, the same being as their original. But this redefinition would be semantics. Nothing frees you from the absolute and irrevocable nature of your death, in this or any other universe, ever. The post-singularity upload is still a copy, however good, and at this point the analogy of copying minds as software breaks down, because the mind isn't separate from the brain, and whether or not there's an entity on the wires which believes itself to be you, you are still no less dead.

gnaritas2• 13 years ago

> you still die.

Uh, no.

> In the future the notion of what it means to be alive, and human, and dead, may be reinterpreted so that these models are considered to be, essentially, the same being as their original.

You haven't considered that more likely, we'll become so augmented with additional abilities that the pure natural "you" will no longer feel like you even to yourself. You consciousness will outgrow your biological body even though it's rooted in it and at some point, "you" even to yourself will be mostly machine anyway so when the biology finally dies off, it will still be the original "you" left in the machine. Losing the biology will make it no less you than losing an arm.

> The post-singularity upload is still a copy

It simply won't be an upload, "you" will already be a cyborg mostly made of machine anyway.

anonymous• 13 years ago

> you are still no less dead

Well, therein lies the rub.

Q: What is "you"? What does it mean to be self-aware? What is the "self"? Are we each a separate self-aware entity? Are we all just reincarnations of the same conciousness? If you build a sufficiently advanced simulation of a brain, will it be self-aware? Can you be reincarnated as a machine? Can we link two brains together in a way that results in a single conciousness? Do people who have had their left and right hemispheres separated have two "souls" now? If the universe ends in heat death and some spontaneous fluctuation causes a true vacuum to appear, inside of which a completely new universe is born, in which thinking beings emerge, can you be reincarnated as one of them? Do things ever end?

A: Buggered if I know. (for now)

danshapiro2• 13 years ago

Recently took a CPR class in Seattle. Not for any particular reason, just because it seemed like a handy skill to pick up for two hours time invested. I learned a few interesting bits of trivia.

--Seattle has the highest survival rate for heart stop events in the world at 56%. That's because of pioneering advances in EMT training, broad availability of AEDs, high percentage of people trained, etc.

--When I asked for a point of comparison, he said Detroit was 4%.

--AEDs don't actually bring you back to consciousness. They just make CPR more effective. (much more!)

--Bad CPR is much better than no CPR. So much so that high end AEDs will actually teach you CPR with voice prompts, since it's better than sitting there. Some 911 operators will coach you through it as well. Even if your CPR is rusty, it's worth trying.

--Modern CPR (for adults) no longer includes rescue breaths. Mouth-to-mouth was too much of a turnoff, and chest compressions alone are very effective given the response times of ambulances.

--And most importantly - $40 and two hours can save a life! You can set yourself up here: http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/CPRAndECC/CPR_UCM_001118_SubHo...

danielweber• 13 years ago

I heard somewhere that plain old CPR was very unlikely to help. Still probably better than nothing if someone is there with their heart not beating. Does this go along with your stats?

EDIT: By sheer coincidence I found my stat about CPR while commenting on another thread. http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die...

danshapiro2• 13 years ago

Plain old CPR by itself, with no ambulance on the way, is very unlikely to help. (That was another interesting tidbit - people almost never "wake up" while CPR is being administered).

Ambulance + plain old CPR, however, is much more effective than Ambulance + yelling "ITS GOING TO BE OK!" or playing Angry Birds or whatever. I don't remember the stats on effectiveness of performing CPR while waiting for the ambulance vs. not, but they were persuasive.

firemanx• 13 years ago

When I took a CPR class a few years back, we were told that the point of "Samaritan CPR" was really just to keep the person going until a first responder got there, but that the chances of survival past 5 or 10 minutes got increasingly low without actual medical attention.

evilduck• 13 years ago

I've been in a situation where we were administering CPR to someone who simply could not have been helped by CPR (although there was no way of us knowing that at the time). We were relieved by first responders in about 3 minutes from calling 911 though.

Plus, as others have said, it's also beneficial for the bystanders to be doing something beneficial. In my own situation, I didn't know for sure that CPR wouldn't have helped until the autopsy came back. That's a pretty big time frame to sit around and wonder if you could have done anything or not. If you're just a random person on the street, you may never get that information to ease your mind.

elmuchoprez• 13 years ago

"When I asked for a point of comparison, he said Detroit was 4%."

The stats on Detroit emergency responders are utterly embarrassing. You pretty much can't count on police, fire or EMT even if you had a gunshot wound in a burning house and the shooter was still there.

So I'm guessing the issue in Detroit is less about technique and more about no access to trained responders.

*And to be clear, I'm not blaming the emergency responders in Detroit for the problem. The city is huge and spread out so it takes a long time to get to the scene, there's no funding for additional outposts or training, and the jobs are dangerous making them unattractive to people with other options, and there's a higher than average amount of serious crime and emergencies.

pyre2• 13 years ago

At it's height Detroit was a city of ~2 million people. As of the 2004(?) census, the city fell below 1 million (~800k?) and lost a lot of Federal funding, spawning the constant budget crisis; furthering the downward spiral.

heironimus• 13 years ago

Not being in the medical industry, I'm curious what people say about the 4th paragraph here, indicating that many/most physicians would prefer not to have CPR performed on them. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/08/how-doctors-ch...

colanderman• 13 years ago

Exactly one, a healthy man who'd had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a "tension pneumothorax"), walked out of the hospital.

I was recently witness to exactly this situation. The father of a friend of mine, an otherwise healthy man in his late 50s, collapsed when his heart stopped due to what was later diagnosed as some heart rhythm problem (I'm not sure exactly the cause). A friend of the family performed CPR until the ambulance arrived (which took a while, this being a rural location).

Less than a week later he was back on his feet.

I'm not a medical professional, so I can't say for sure that he would have survived without CPR; but I don't doubt it was key to his survival.

kevinskii2• 13 years ago

> AEDs don't actually bring you back to consciousness. They just make CPR more effective. (much more!)

Perhaps a trained medical professional will correct me, but I've worked closely with the technology for years and I don't believe this is accurate. An AED can indeed bring someone back to consciousness if the shock is successful. If it isn't successful, then it wouldn't affect the efficacy of CPR one way or the other.

The rest of your comment seems spot on.

pygy_• 13 years ago

This is correct. The only point of defibrillation (automatic or not) is to stop ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation (electric rhythms that don't cause effective heart contractions), and kick-start a sinusal (normal) rhythm.

If the cardiac arrest is the result of another mechanism, defibrillation is ineffective.

graeham• 13 years ago

Finished a 2-day first aid+CPR course today, the stat was that ~0.2% (or was it 0.02%) or people getting CPR have their heart start without a defib (AED or at the hospital) (also am a biomed engg researcher working on arteries but not the heart directly). CPR is bascially to keep the person somewhat oxygenated until they can get a defib (such as from an AED). A study found a 39% boost in likelyhood in surviving to being discharged from the hospital if AED+CPR was used compared to CPR alone [3]

An AED disrupts the fibrillation of the heart - often an outcome of a heart attack. Fibrillation is basically different parts of the heart firing randomly, with the effect that not much blood gets pumped. A defib (from AED or otherwise) is like a hard reboot of the heart, to try to reset the heart so it all contracts together again.

Consciousness is more to due with a neuro-state, which is affected by blood flow so its a symptom of the heart problem rather than the problem itself.

Also, as someone else mentioned, heart stopping /= death anymore, it is determined by brain activity [2]

[1] http://intensivecare.hsnet.nsw.gov.au/cardiac-arrest [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death#Diagnosis [3] http://depts.washington.edu/chru/May-20-A-Wicks-2_JC.pdf

larrik• 13 years ago

"--Modern CPR (for adults) no longer includes rescue breaths. Mouth-to-mouth was too much of a turnoff, and chest compressions alone are very effective given the response times of ambulances."

I heard this years ago, and both times that I took CPR certification classes since then, we did mouth-to-mouth anyway. I guess different courses are different.

SoftwareMaven2• 13 years ago

My wife (an MA for a pediatrician) told me the current standard she needs to test to is 25 compressions per rescue breath.

antiterra• 13 years ago

It depends on who teaches it. I believe the American Heart Association got rid of rescue breaths but the American Red Cross still trains for two breaths every 30 compressions.

Natsu• 13 years ago

> --Modern CPR (for adults) no longer includes rescue breaths.

That's only for bystanders for the reason you cite (reluctance to give aid). Rescue breaths are helpful and those of us who have to respond for our employer still give them. I carry around a barrier mask all the time now.

Source: I have the HCP level CPR cert.

nmcfarl• 13 years ago

This is a barrier mask, for those of us that didn’t have a clue: http://www.staples.com/Ambu-CPR-Barrier-Masks-with-Key-Chain...

That spiral in the middle is the one way valve.

rdl2• 13 years ago

Rescue breaths with CPR are also the standard for drowning victims, still. I believe it's still being taught as the standard for diving medicine, even volunteer/buddy rescues.

prawn• 13 years ago

Finished a two-evening first aid course with St Johns on Tuesday here in Australia. The CPR instruction for infants, children and adults alike all included a pattern of 30 compressions then two mouth-to-mouth breaths.

vacri6• 13 years ago

The child/adult numbers were coalesced to reduce confusion. You can also get away with no rescue breaths, not just because of the ick-factor others have mentioned, but because your compression of the chest is also compressing the lungs, providing enough airflow for the needs - and just as importantly, you haven't stopped compressing to deliver the breaths. Similarly, if you don't need to move to deliver the breaths, you don't need to find your correct compression spot on the chest again.

geekam• 13 years ago

CPR's are not very effective. A large number of doctors do not want CPRs to be done on them. http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2013/jan/15/bitt...

jeremyjh• 13 years ago

If you go read the abstract of the study cited, you should note that the mean age of the physicians interviewed was 68. I think hospitals do a lot of unnecessary CPR if the wishes of the patient are not known. If someone expires after a long illness or after a very difficult surgery there is little and less chance that perfunctory CPR will be helpful. There is a lot of difference for a relatively fit person who collapses on a treadmill. The odds are stacked against them but its not nearly so futile.

sskates• 13 years ago

The study asked about "preferences of physician-participants for treatment given a scenario of irreversible brain injury without terminal illness", which is a very different scenario than randomly having a heart attack when you're 50 and otherwise in okay health.

ar4s• 13 years ago

Are they teaching the "100 chest pumps per minute" technique now?

I recall seeing that it is almost as effective as the "legacy" CPR rescue breaths.

It's honestly super easy to remember, and I'll feel comfortable performing it if I find myself in that situation.

skore• 13 years ago

I've read that a good mnemonic is going roughly by the beat of "Stayin' Alive".

kingkawn2• 13 years ago

"Seattle has the highest survival rate for heart stop events in the world at 56%. That's because of pioneering advances in EMT training, broad availability of AEDs, high percentage of people trained, etc."

Statistic is true, but to say it is because of those things would requite some further analysis. Given confounding factors I don't think you can make that claim.

Seattle has an obesity rate of 22.5%, compared with 35.7% nationwide, and 33.1% in Detroit. Obesity is a major risk factor for cardiac arrest.

Seattle is also extremely white for a large American city, 67.1%, versus a place like Detroit which is 82.7% African American. Black American's have significantly higher incidences of hypertension and cardiac disease than White Americans, both for reasons that seem to have some unrealiable relations to genetic heritage but more significantly due to social stressors related to racism and overrepresentation of poverty.

Speaking of economics, Seattle has a median household income of $45k, while Detroit has a median household income of $26k. Cardiac Arrest risk factors are greatly exacerbated in the United States by poverty.

I don't deny the importance of instituting up-to-date protocols for Emergency health personnel, broad equipment supply, and widespread lay education. But to give them all the credit is to ignore Seattle's many advantages, and Detroit's many other sufferings.

gambiting• 13 years ago

Where are come from(Poland) you have to learn how to do CPR as a part of your driving test - in case of an accident you are required by law to stop and help, so it's only logical that CPR skills are required to get a driving licence. So most people know how to do it, they had to learn it to be able to drive.

sentenza• 13 years ago

Same in Germany and possibly more countries in Europe. And here in Germany there are also special courses for giving first aid to children available to parents at low to no cost.

pfedor• 13 years ago

I was curious so I looked up the numbers on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation#E...

The survival rates are:

CPR by a bystander: 4%

Cardiocerebral Resuscitation (i.e., chest compressions only without artificial respiration): 6%

No bystander CPR: 2%

So attempting CPR results on average in doubling the survival rate as opposed to just waiting for an ambulance, and chest compressions only are 50% better than chest compressions plus mouth-to-mouth.

gyom2• 13 years ago

The most interesting part of that post ties with something that Richard Dawkins likes to remind us :

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia."

brokenparser• 13 years ago

I think it's a religious belief to think splooge has lots of tiny people in it (and therefore one should refrain from pleasing oneself), but it's really just unicellular organisms (which I think may outnumber all the grains of sand on Earth).

maxerickson• 13 years ago

Unsurprisingly, that isn't quite the angle uber-athiest Richard Dawkins is using:

http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/91-to-live-at-all-is-...

gyom2• 13 years ago

He wasn't talking about homunculus, if that's what you mean, but I didn't imagine there could be confusion about what he meant.

It's basically like thinking about the kids that could have had if you had descendants with person A instead of person B. There's nobody around to be disappointed for not being born, but those who got be alive are "lucky" in a certain sense of the word.

dzuc• 13 years ago

What exactly are the risk factors that lead up to this type of event?

teddyknox• 13 years ago

That's what I want to know, this is scary stuff...

Alex39172• 13 years ago

At age 21, prescription amphetamines are probably the biggest risk factor.

Daniel_Newby2• 13 years ago

Prescription stimulants are remarkably safe in sensible doses—they make the heart beat faster but do little to destabilize it.

The stimulant risk comes from cocaine, which directly interferes with electricity by jamming sodium channels shut.

kayoone3• 13 years ago

It is often related to hypertrophy of the heart muscle, at least this is a common cause in the sudden death of young athletes.

jcfrei• 13 years ago

wow, this is must be the first and only one of those cheesy stories that I can actually relate to. thanks.

funthree• 13 years ago

Death is permanent; you didn't die.

squozzer• 13 years ago

I have a bit of a cruel streak, but I always joke about pretending the flames of hell are licking my soul as I die and scaring the bejeezus out of anyone who might be in earshot of my passing.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

This would have been just as interesting and clickworthy with a title like 'I had a massive heart attack at 21.' As it is, the story has nothing to do with the title at all.

louvicious• 13 years ago

Very insightful, great post.

hello_newman2• 13 years ago

Svbtle never ceases to amaze me when I read an article. This was another example of a great article.

I think the author brings up a fabulous point; be grateful for everything you have.

It is so easy to get caught up in our lives and to envy others who have the newest this or the latest that. But to truly be grateful for what you have, material or otherwise, family, friends, doing things you love etc is so important.

We often don't realize how lucky we are to just be alive, in good health, surrounded by people who love us. As long as you have that, you are in my opinion among the few lucky people on earth.

Kudos on a great article.

rdl2• 13 years ago

What state is this where a gym didn't have an AED? Also, where paramedics arrive onsite in 4.5 minutes. The intersection of those two states is a very small set.

martinced• 13 years ago

"Of those that do survive, more than half of them have brain damage."

I've read a theory that if as soon as someone as heart attack you put ice on his head you lower the risk of permanent brain damage. If I'm not mistaken there's been a doctor / hospital / ambulances allowing to test this theory in the U.S. (don't remember which one) and they had apparently statistically significant better results when ambulancers did immediately put the head in ice.

Our brain is one heck of a CPU and when the blood doesn't cool it it starts melting fast apparently : (

Lowering temp to 32 deg certainly helped but apparently every second counts: the faster you put the head in ice, the lower the brain damage. So while someone is trying to do CPR, someone else should go fetch lots of ice.

Interesting "feeling lucky to have a great life that I just want to continue to live".

Welcome back!

ams6110• 13 years ago

That would be 32 C I guess... certainly they didn't freeze him...

ramchip• 13 years ago

Cells require less oxygen at lower temperatures (metabolism slows down), so a cold brain could cope better with lower blood oxygen levels.

achivetta• 13 years ago

Go watch this video: http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/CPRAndECC/HandsOnlyCPR/Hands-O...

That's all you need to know as a lay-rescuer. And if you forget, the 911 operator will walk you through it.

( Or, if you'd rather: http://supersexycpr.com )

kayoone3• 13 years ago

Wow, if that would have happened to me, i dont think i could ever do serious workout anymore. Are you allowed to still do sports without any risks ? After all suffering sudden cardiac arrest is extremely rare, but in most cases there is some underlying condition which can cause it in very rare cases, like an unnormal sized heart.

I am 30 years old and generally pretty fit, but 2 months ago i fainted early in the morning. I was a bit sick, did work out the day before, had a really bad sleep with alot of sweating and felt totally devastated in the morning. Still (for whatever reason) i didnt drink anything and took my girlfriend to work and on the way back i was feeling extremely uncomfortable, got out of the car and blacked out. I woke up seconds later realizing i had fallen onto the street and had blasting back pains... Something like this happening was a total shock to me, i never had problems in this regard. Went to the hospital and a cardiologist and got everything checked and they said that all is totally fine, it was most probably a combination of dehydration+sickness+bad sleep etc.

But still, in the weeks after it i felt some strange anxiety and checked my pulse alot, which i have never done before. I am still nervous when working out even if i havent had any problems since then, but it still makes me feel uneasy for some reason.

Given that, if i would have suffered the same fate as this guy, i am sure i would have some serious anxiety issues.

Good story mate, inspiring that you are so uninspired by it!

kayoone3• 13 years ago

Freaking scary, makes one think twice to work out alone at home or going for a run in the woods alone...

spoiler• 13 years ago

Reading all the comments here is giving me a throbbing, phantom pain in my chest. D:

Tenoke• 13 years ago

>For me, it took losing everything to remember how lucky I am.

So he did have an epiphany.

snambi• 13 years ago

nice story

What it’s like to die

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