Light Traces of Snow
In the backcountry of national parks like this one in Utah, collecting of downed or dead wood is discouraged. As a result, you can see natural falls of dead wood that persist for years and provide home for insects and other small animals. Here, a fall retains the snow that fell a week ago due to its insulating properties and provides a source of persistent moisture ideal for life.
Meteor Crater Arizona
This crater is said to have been caused by a meteor impact about 50,000 years ago.
A Stranger Life
There’s more. A 33 y/o woman named Marlise Munoz is being kept alive by a ventilator in Fort Worth, Texas. Six weeks ago, she collapsed and died from a brain aneurysm. She was fourteen weeks pregnant. According to Texas law, the hospital says, she cannot be removed from life support as long as she is pregnant. Texas is one of at least 31 states that, to some degree, prohibit the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from a woman who is pregnant. However, if Marlise is brain-dead, she is legally dead, and experts say there is no need to continue “life-sustaining” treatment to someone who is already dead.
Marlise’s parents want the hospital to remove the ventilator and allow her to die normally. It seems to me that the fetus will have little chance of survival and no chance of normalcy. There is no rhyme or reason in a law that forces a hospital to do something that is both unnatural and against the wishes of the patient’s family, especially when the outcome is so likely to be dismal. Surely law must allow for the reasoning of a group of learned doctors in cases like this.
A Strange Death
Here’s the story, from Paul in the NYT comments:
“Ah, if things were only so simple. Jahi McMath’s surgery was extensive removal of tissue from her throat, including a tonsillectomy, to alleviate severe sleep apnea. She started bleeding severely, for as yet undisclosed reasons (the family still has a gag on the hopital for privacy issues) and died. Three days later she was declared brain dead, but kept on a ventilator at the families request. Then they hired liability attorney Chris Dolan to help them force the hospital to treat their daughter as if she was still alive and might recover. After six different doctors, including the head of pediatric neurology at Stanford, examined the girl and declared her brain dead, and three courts agreed and would not force the hospital to perform a tracheotomy and insert a feeding tube (the hospital refused on the grounds that it would be unethical to perform surgery on a dead person) the family and their lawyer, through negotiations with the hospital and a judge, got the hospital to release the girl’s body to someone else. The family was able to get an ambulance service to take responsibility for the body, which was then turned over to the family who has taken it to an undisclosed location and claim that breathing and feeding tubes have been inserted and the girl is “improving”. There has been no confirmation of that and a hospital doctor testified that the body had already begun to deteriorate before it was released. And then there are the lawyers other efforts that this feeds.”
All this exactly as reported in the LA Times.
Then there’s this:
”
The surgery went well, all tissue needed to be removed, was removed. All bleeding was localized and cauterized or sutured as necessary by the surgeons.
She was placed in post-op and only chipped ice/pop sickles were allowed to give the wound time to heal. Jahi had a vociferous appetite which her parents could not control prior to surgery, thus resulting in her morbid obesity, and she certainly couldn’t control post surgery either.
She snuck her favorite foods, potato chips, cheetos, etc in clear defiance of the medical staff and unfortunately, these sharp foods tore a healing wound in her neck. The blood flowed into her lungs, asphyziating her, resulting in her being declared brain dead of all cerebral/cerebellar functioning.
This is my conjecture of what happened, having been a pediatrician, knowing these kids that are driven to eat in the face of medical safety. She in essence contributed to her own demise. The parents know it and will not admit it…”
I also found a reference to her eating cheeseburgers in the ICU after surgery, which I found absurd. I don’t know how closely she was being watched.
Anything else I find will be passed on.
Open Fire
Made from scrap wood laid on bare ground.
Placebos and Pain Relief
Dr. Rami Burstein, who works at Harvard University, has released a new study that says interesting things about pain relief and placebos. He studied patients with migraines who consented to take placebos and/or Maxalt when they had migraines.
The patients were given pills labelled as placebo, possibly placebo or Maxalt, and Maxalt. Those who took placebos labelled as such got some pain relief, while patients who took nothing got worse over the first couple of hours. Those who took placebos labelled as Maxalt got more pain relief, in fact almost as much pain relief as Maxalt tablets labelled as placebos. Of course, those who took Maxalt labelled Maxalt got the most pain relief. This is consistent with the fact that Maxalt is considered clinically effective for migraines.
Why is this study important? It shows that even when patients knowingly take a placebo, there is some demonstrable pain relief. It also shows that, when administering a remedy you know to be effective, you will get better results if you endorse it to the patient unhesitatingly.
There is also a caution: drugs that don’t work can produce a measurable effect on the patient if the patient is aware of what is expected. This caution particularly applies to many psychiatric drugs, particularly antidepressants and antipsychotics, that may produce so many side effects that determination of efficacy is fatally compromised.
Fisherwoman on a Mountain Lake
These lakes are created by damming streams at high elevations. The lakes are often stocked with such fish as rainbow trout. These fish are best enjoyed when fried on an open campfire immediately after catching.
[This fragment was written on November 19, 2013, but for some reason unknown was not published.]
The fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas is coming up shortly, on November 22, and most who were old enough can remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard. There was a contagious sense of shock and paralysis. The Secret Service is responsible for protecting the President from assassination, by interposing one’s body into the path of a bullet, if necessary. They felt the shock more than anyone else living.
The agent who was closest to President and Mrs. Kennedy when the shots were fired was in the car behind them as the motorcade travelled about twelve miles an hour down the street. He heard three shots before he could react, and he was hit by a spray of blood and brains. He jumped out of the car he was riding in and ran to the back of the Kennedy’s car. He could see Mrs. Kennedy reaching over the trunk of the car picking up pieces of his brain. He climbed in to the car with them and he could see that President Kennedy’s gaze was fixed and he was sure that he was dead. He gave a thumb’s down gesture to the driver of the car behind them. He heard Mrs. Kennedy talking.
Mrs. Kennedy said a lot of things that he remembered fifty years later when he finally came out with a public revelation of everything he knows. He gave an interview to go with the fiftieth anniversary and said that, after the assassination, he was so depressed that he shut himself away and never saw his family or friends. He said that he has finally become reconciled with it but that it took almost fifty years.
…this man’s story and the fact that he became severely disabled after the incident should teach all of us a lesson about how much a person can tolerate and what will cause him to break down: in this case, he was directly responsible for the safety of the President; he was the closest agent to Mr. Kennedy, close enough to be hit by the blood/brain spray; and there was nothing he could do, despite his responsibility, to save him.
It is interesting that another person was hit by the blood/brain spray that occurred when the President was shot: a motorcycle officer riding behind and to the left of Mr. Kennedy’s car. He has a vivid memory of being hit by a spray of blood and brain matter at the same time. He was not disabled after the incident. He was, of course, not directly responsible for the President’s safety.
Canyon landscape
Taken in a national park in Utah.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 