Posted on 03/20/2009 4:04:53 PM PDT by devere
It seems that there was no neurosurgeon at the local hospital, and no medical helicopter in the entire province of Quebec, so once she fell poor Natasha was doomed, even if she had asked for immediate medical assistance. It seems almost unbelievable in the 21st century, but that's what socialized medicine brings you. Death.
They weren’t on beginners slopes, they were moving pretty fast.
In either one of those cases you should be checked out at the hospital. Both can kill you hours later with no major warning signs.
Brain injuries can be very unpredictable as to the ultimate outcome.
The brain needs to be protected and a helmet is obviously an excellent preventative choice when engaged in sports such as snow skiing.
Skiing is inherently dangerous. Ski resorts are not exactly next door to Level 1 Trauma Centers. Under the best of circumstances if you are seriously hurt skiing it will be 1 to 2 hours before you will be at large medical center. Plenty of injuries will kill you faster then that.
Bad stuff happens, thats just the way it is.........
Socialized medicine means “Dying in Line!”
B.O. will feel better though, because “everybody” will have an insurance card.
The fact that nobody will be able to actually receive medical care is just a cost saving side benefit.
95% of the hospitals in the USA do not have neurosurgeons on staff.
Simple. Bono and Kennedy suffered massive physical injuries from which they could not recover even when treated. Natasha likely had a blood clot from which recovery was possible. Unfortunately, in her case, if the time reported is correct, she had a stroke within an hour of falling. I suspect that unless she was very close to a hospital, and she was immediately attended to in the ER, and she immediately was given a brain scan which was immediately analyzed and then she was immediately treated, she would have died anyway. I do not see how it would have been possible to accomplish all of that within one hour.
"After she was stabilized, Richardson was transferred to a Montreal trauma centre by ambulance, because, unlike most provinces, Quebec has no emergency helicopter system. The trip took about one hour while a helicopter ride would have carried her to Montreal in 15 minutes.Trauma specialists have been warning of this lack of service for years, saying it could lead to unnecessary deaths.
"This is like not having a fire department in a community," said Dr. Tarek Razek, head of the trauma team at the McGill University Health Centre.
WTF...??? Do you realize how effin' BIG the Province of Quebec is....??? It's THREE TIMES the size of FRANCE and nearly even times the size of Great Britain!!!
My G*d. It is absolutely unconscionable that Canada's largest province doesn't have an actual medical helicopter for its hospitals. The logistics involved simply dictate that a province that gigantic must have an emergency medical air transport.
No, it's FREE*
* Restrictions may apply. Check with your local provider.
True, except it takes 6 months to get an MRI in Canada, unless you want to get one for your dog or cat and pay for that yourself
She walked away on her own free will..........So what do you want, MANDATORY hospitalization? LOL!
I disagree with the premise.
She felt fine at first and turned away the ambulance.
Even if there had been a neurosurgeon there - she wasn’t at the hospital to take advantage of that EVEN IF it was possible to diagnose and perform some sort of surgery quickly enough - which we don’t know if surgery would have saved her or not.
Sometimes freak accidents happen - and this was a freak accident.
Astonishing ignorance is on display here. There are any number of fine Montreal hospitals that could have responded ... the Royal Vic, affiliated with McGill University, with a excellent neurosurgery unit, the Montreal General, likewise and others. The skiing accident occurred 75 miles north of Montreal in the Laurentian Mountains. Initially the victim seemed fine, it was only an hour later that the symptoms began to appear. At that point she was rushed by ambulance to a regional hospital, then on to a larger hospital in Montreal. Don’t give me this Canadian socialized medicine crap ... if this skiing accident had occurred in Stowe, VT or Lake Placid, NY the results would have been the same.
By the time I got notified and got to the hospital, he was bloody but was sitting up talking, knew who I was and didn't have a broken bone in his body. They kept him for observation, and within a couple of hours he was semi conscious and unable to remember much of anything. He had a hematoma on the right side of his brain. The difference is his was not growing,or being fed as the dr put it, but another difference is the amount of force they say he absorbed. They estimated his speed at 70mph. No one understands how he got out of the car w/no broken bones and a small cut on his forehead. They don't see the hematoma which is causing him horrific headaches.
She had a tumble, felt fine right after so they waved off the ambulance call. Her hematoma obviously continued to grow.
God is sovereign. He knows the day of our birth and the day of our passing. I pray she was ready for hers, my husband was, but it wasn't his day.
“I lost a son to a closed head injury”
And I lost a daughter to one as well.
This isn't as uncommon as you might think, even here in the US. I'll bet half the county hospitals in MI have a neurosurgeon on call at best, and that only a dozen in the state have one in residence.
From Mont Tremblant to Montreal Sacre Coeur Hospital is 70 miles , one way. Paved highway.
She was taken to the Centre Hostopial Luarentien where her condition deteriorated. A CT scan revealed a tear in the temporal artery in the left side of the brain and she was immediately transferred to the Montreal Sacre Coeur Hospital. Doctors administered steroids in a bid to reduce the bleeding but scans showed the level of activity was minimal.
Of course I am not privy to the autopsy reports, ski lodge accident reports, or the hospital reports but this is not safety bubble wrap world. No matter how tragic this may be, sometimes there is no way out. In a litigious world, someone must be accountable; but in the real world this stuff just happens.
The drum beat of late is the use of helmets. If this accident is the criteria for wearing protective gear, all of us should be outfitted with goalie hockey pads (government expense, by the way).
“95% of the hospitals in the USA do not have neurosurgeons on staff.”
They probably have an emergency room general surgeon who deals with life-threatening emergencies. I’m no expert on American hospitals, but I’ve never heard of anyone ( let alone a famous celebrity! ) with a life-threatening injury being put in an ambulance for a 2 1/2 hour ride in order to receive urgently needed treatment that will surely be too late to save them. It’s a socialized caricature of emergency medicine.
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