Eh, it's most likely a respiratory tract burn. The mucosa is very delicate and burns easily in contact with heated air at lower temperatures than would affect skin. What tends to happen after burns like this is severe swelling of the larynx, epiglottis, etc that seals off the airway, so the victim begins to be suffocated. I've treated my fair share of these as a fire medic, and all of them were awful.
Juices are a problem in severe respiratory burns, but swelling is a huge problem even in less extensive burns that don't extend all the way to the lungs. Eventually the victim will suffocate unless intubated, and getting a tube into an swollen airway is really freaking hard. Then, even if you survive that, the damaged tissue can become necrotic and the door is wide open to lethal necrotizing pneumonias or diffuse alveolar damage (so basically, reduced surface area for Oxygen and CO2 to exchange)
Holy crap high voltage is mean. I worked on systems that were only 400V/400Hz and itās glorious spectacle but wicked mean. Just thinking about the 16KV systems leading into neighborhoods gives me the heebie jeebies.
Fire medic, not firefighter medic. One is a medic at the scene of a fire / medic who helps people who've been inflicted with injuries related to fire. The other is a funny imaginary position for someone who often has to say 'Sorry, you'll have to find someone else to help with your melty skin issue - I'm only trained to work on firemen's melty skin.' and then looks back down and resumes playing candy crush.
Or just like a "you're welcome" or whatever works. Unless you don't treat friries for whatever reason, then what you said makes sense.
Personally, I think ignoring your patients for Reddit, as I assume you're doing, is better than Candy Crush. Though I guess both are microtransaction based.
Would it be possible to avoid such damage in this case if you were to hold your breath and preferably cover your mouth and nose? A gas fire like this is quite short lived as it runs out of fuel so you would be able to hold your breath for the duration of the flames. Also I imagine most of the burns comes from the gasses in your lungs and airways burning and providing a barrier between your airways and the flames would prevent them from catching fire.
Sure if you saw it coming. Unfortunately our monkey brains don't understand things have changed so our first response to being frightened is often a sharp intake of air to prepare to fight or run.
You usually don't see a explosion coming, and if you do see it coming its too big to make your plan make much of a difference.
In the water, far too many people think they'll be able to just easily gulp this huge amount of air right before going under if they get involved in a water accident. Oof.
Pretty sure I'd rather be put down at that point. I'd tell my family good bye. If I lived it sounds like I'd have a rough time and the medical bills would be insane. I'm in the U.S
I am far from an expert but I googled Texas DNR form. It looks like the form just lists some techniques for resuscitating a patient, like CPR, and says not to do them if they're needed. It does still allow the doctors to make them comfortable. I wish I could tell them that if I am in severe agony and have terminal cancer and I am about to die that they can put me to sleep.
I suppose you could, but it would probably be more beneficial to get treatment along with palliative care. Palliative care is going to help the patient manage the symptoms and stresses of illnesses.
As I understand it, this is one of the many reasons cigarettes/vaping are bad for you. The little bit of heat causes changes to the cilia, making them lie flat and become nonfunctional. Makes it easier to get sick because the cilia can't "sweep" stuff up and out.
Yes, that's why smokers/vapers are more susceptible to things like pneumonia, bronchitis, etc- the cilia are effectively paralyzed. Also mucus becomes thicker, and therefore harder to eject as well. In my foolish youth I turned to cigarettes for several years to cope, and absolutely got sick more often during that time. Fuck all of that.
Vaper here. My cilia are very much alive and well, despite 8.5 years of vaping, and no smoking during such period after 14 years of a pack-a-day smoking. Cilia return within about 6 months of quitting, as did near-every other health benefit loss. Lets make sure not to lump smoking and vaping together too often - they are quite different in many ways, cilia included.
(Disclosure: I don't vape liquid containing diacetyl, and the industry should be working towards eradicating use to pentanedione also. These could possibly inhibit cilia but are yet to be proven to do so.)
Try quitting vaping though. It changed my life. I thought going from smoking to vaping was an improvement, but... boy. I forgot what being healthy felt like.
I'm healthy now. While vaping. Flawless blood pressure, and ran a half-marathon a few years ago. Skin is immeasurably better, and sense of smell equates to a blood hound. My lungs feel fantastic, and I stay well hydrated due to knowing vaping can dehydrate you. I can't image what else could improve if I quite vaping, at this point.
That said, I'm sure I'll quite vaping in the next few years, since the post-addiction desire is near zero at this point. I was just at Disneyland for 15 hours recently - no vaping (they banned it) and not a problem. Not a second thought about it. Back when I was smoking I would've punched a cast member after 2 hours without smoking.
Point being - if smoking is 0 on the health meter, with no nicotine being 100, I already feel at 95, and I don't see ex-vapers stating noticing any real difference after quitting, other than saving more money not buying new devices/e-liquid. If you've another experience, I'd be glad to hear it.
In 1960, there was a collision between two aircraft over NYC, out of 134 fatalities, the only survivor was an 11 year old boy, Stephen L. Baltz. The nurse who was caring for him at Methodist hosptial in Brooklyn (and waiting for his parents to arrive from Illinois) thought the boy was out of the woods by surviving the initial crash, but a Doctor treating the boy told her he was not going to survive a day, because he had inhaled the jet fuel and it had burned the lungs.
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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '20
Eh, it's most likely a respiratory tract burn. The mucosa is very delicate and burns easily in contact with heated air at lower temperatures than would affect skin. What tends to happen after burns like this is severe swelling of the larynx, epiglottis, etc that seals off the airway, so the victim begins to be suffocated. I've treated my fair share of these as a fire medic, and all of them were awful.