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Blog post:
Real Rescue Stories
6) ROCK CLIMBING LEG FRACTURE and HEART-WRENCHING LONG RECOVERY
Date added: 4/11/2017
A MUST READ: Steph Abegg's educational, experiential, and
at times cleverly amusing and entertaining story will rip your heart clear out
of your chest several times. It's a long story. Worth every moment.
The
rock climbing accident story, fracturing both bones in one lower leg.
The
*must-read* recovery story (a sobering, shocking, heart-wrenching nightmare
which will jerk tears from your eyes while occasionally eliciting smiles and
laughs with Steph's entertaining humor). Learn so much from reading every
single day's recovery journal entry.
Photo of powerful-outdoor-adventurer Steph's leg condition, showing muscle
atrophy after 5 months of no weight-bearing (closely compare her two legs).
Friends, use the techniques MEDIC SOLO teaches to clean, clean, clean every
wound! 2 to 4 liters of water is a LOT to spray through an irrigation
syringe – don't shortcut it! Bring the necessary supplies with you on every
trip! Perhaps this could have helped Steph ... or perhaps her recovery
complications were introduced in the hospital.
Consider carrying a Satellite Phone, as I (MEDIC Instructor Matt) do when
guiding long, remote wilderness excursions. Steph mentions in her story
that a sat phone could have helped. It can shorten rescue time, and enable
communicating the patient's and group's exact needs. And it's cheap.
I rent from
www.satellitephonesolutions.com – just ~$100 to rent for a week or two.
Sample direct excerpts from Steph's journal-story:
"In fact, I found that if I could withstand the pain long
enough without taking painkillers, my pain would actually become more tolerable
(and I became more clearheaded and less nauseous too). Shortly after I left the
hospital I was not even taking Tylenol, despite the severeness of the injuries.
I think my leg had fulfilled its lifetime pain quota during the first few
weeks."
"I discovered that there is a free shuttle running from the U-District to
Harborview—at least something is free in the American Health Care system."
"With my medical bills possibly reaching $400,000 by the end of the year and a
$100,000 maximum benefit on my graduate student insurance plan, it seemed I
would be losing all of my hard-earned savings that were meant for the next four
years of grad school ... Already, more than one person had mentioned bankruptcy.
This predicament didn't seem fair - What is the point of paying for medical
insurance if the insured end up loosing all of their money anyway?" [Accident
occurred prior to implementation of most Affordable Care Act provisions; I have
no idea one way or the other what if any difference it would have made.]
"When I had last talked with my orthopedic surgeon Dr. Krieg about a month ago,
the plan was to wait until the infection was under control, and then do a series
of surgeries, which would involve: re-breaking the bone to achieve a better
alignment, taking a bone graft from my upper tibia and hip, screwing plates
along the tibia and fibula, and cutting a section of my Achilles tendon to
slightly lengthen it in order to reduce future stiffness problems."
"To get around in Italy, you need all-wheel drive crutches."
*Thank you* dtWFA grad Deborah R. for sharing this story with
me. Please stay in touch, folks!
And most importantly, thank you Steph for being so open, sharing your life
experiences via word, photograph, and video – enriching all of our lives. My
heart and deep respect go out to you.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dates:
the five blog stories below came out some time before year 2017. A facebook blog app
ceased to function, and MEDIC's back-up captured the content but not the date of
writing.
1) Here is the
story and pictures from a rescue I (Matt) stumbled upon while out
hiking in Shenandoah National Park.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2) STORY: 27-HOUR CAVE RESCUE with 106 RESCUERS
Are you a caver? Take the
Orientation to Cave Rescue course. I've taken it; it's fantastic and
cheap.
Now then, check out and learn from
this astounding story of cave rescue gone right:
CERTers: a CERT team assisted in the rescue effort
WFR graduates: Remember learning about angulated compound (open) femur
fractures and (potential) hemo-, pneumo-, or hemopneumothorax?
ALL: some tidbit highlights you'll encounter in reading the excellent
play-by-play in the story link above:
TIMELINE:
~3:30pm: Slip & fall; patient unresponsive; someone starts heading toward
cave exit to call for help.
~6:00pm: Friend exits cave and calls for help; EMS is activated.
6:30pm: First set of helpers arrive at a rescue staging area set up near
the cave.
9:15pm: First set of rescuers enter the cave.
11:30pm: First rescuers arrive at patient.
04:40am Next Day: Rescuers start to move patient toward cave exit.
12:30pm: Patient exits cave; thus what took healthy cavers 2.5 hours to
traverse, took nearly 8 hours (three times as long) when carrying the injured
caver.
6:35pm: Last set of rescuers exit cave.
---------------
27 Hour Rescue
With 106 Rescue & Support Personnel, the Emergency Services Command Bus and more
JUST SOME OF THE CHALLENGES (read the website to discover more):
> Terrain
> Risk of injury to rescuers
> Challenging transport of supplies to patient, and patient to cave exit
> Communication
> Duration of rescue
> Patient injuries unknown to rescue team for 5 ½ hours
> Patient injures discovered included (but not limited to!):
-- concussion and possible skull fracture
-- angulated compound heavily-bleeding femur fracture
-- possible pneumo-, hemo-, or hemopneumothorax
-- hypothermic
The patient lived! He was released from the hospital after being there for 40
days.
Would you know what to do if you were out adventuring, or simply traveling
somewhere with limited access to medical support, and someone in your group – or
in someone else's group that you happen to come across – is badly injured?
Consider taking a Disaster + Wilderness First Aid certification course. Scout
Motto: "Be Prepared."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
3) CASE STUDY: THREE JAGUAR ATTACKS in BRAZIL
Check out this
medical article about jaguar attacks on humans in Brazil. It analyzes
three cases (two survivors, one death). Click on pictures to see bigger
versions.
In case #3, a camper sleeping in his closed tent was attacked and dragged 200
feet into the jungle. Yikes.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
4) STORY: 9-DAY MOUNTAINEERING RESCUE ATOP MT. KENYA
Altitude ~16,000 feet. A huge boulder being used as a hand hold shifts, and both
boulder and climber fall. The belayer's hands almost instantaneously get
stripped of skin as the rope slides and burns. The climber suffers a compound
(open) fracture in his lower leg. A snow storm is rolling in. The patient is
left alone for more than 48 hours as the belayer (a physician) leaves to seek
help. On their way up, rescuers succumb to Acute Mountain Sickness (an altitude
illness). On top of that, the rescue helicopter crashes, very sadly claiming the
life of the pilot. Once rescuers finally reach the patient, it would be another
*week* before they get the patient off the mountain. The patient knows he's
going to die and begs to be pushed over the cliff so as not to prolong his
agony.
Check out the
story.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
5) STORY: Violently Ejected from Whitewater Raft, Swam
Through Hydraulic, Made It to Shore, Celebratory Beer Cracked Open, *Then* the
Victim Drops Dead, Then CPR Works!
Source of article below.
Tim Cahill's Heart-Stopping Adventure
The outdoor-writing legend has made a career out of cheating death in wild
places, but he's never cut it closer than this
By: Grayson Schaffer Dec 16, 2014
Tim Cahill suffered a cardiac arrest after falling off his raft at the top of
Lava Falls, in the Grand Canyon. Photo: John Fowler/Flickr
On December 7*, during a Colorado River float trip through the Grand Canyon,
Outside editor at large Tim Cahill suffered a cardiac arrest. He survived an
extremely perilous episode and was flown by helicopter to a hospital in
Flagstaff, Arizona, where he was treated and then released on December 11.
Cahill is one of the country’s most popular and prolific adventure writers, and
his association with this magazine dates back to the very beginning. Starting
with the first issue of Outside, in 1978, he established a vibrant new voice—a
witty mix of reporting, literary travel writing, humor, and self-deprecation.
Cahill’s column, Out There, was an Outside staple for two decades and included
everything from an exposé of turtle slaughter in Mexico to a vicious and
hilarious personal attack against the National Park Service’s Woodsy Owl, whom
he called a “noxious muppet.” Much of his Outside work was later collected in
popular hardcover anthologies, including Jaguars Ripped My Flesh and Pecked to
Death by Ducks.
The Grand Canyon incident occurred on the 14th day of the trip, at Lava Falls,
one of the Colorado’s most treacherous rapids. The group numbered 16 people and
included five rafts and a handful of kayakers; Cahill was a passenger in the
final raft to make the run. The line through Lava Falls requires entering on the
right side of the river and then pulling with the oars to get to the left to
avoid a nasty hydraulic at the bottom. Near the top of the rapid, oarsman Bill
Hobbins angled the boat to begin his move across the current, but he hit a
series of curling waves. Cahill, who is 71, jumped to the side of the boat as it
listed out of the water—a technique known as high-siding—but was flung overboard
instead.
“It’s Lava Falls,” says Cahill, who has been recuperating in Death Valley,
California, before heading back to his home to Livingston, Montana. “No amount
of skill or strength or fervent prayer is going to stop the occasional swim at
that particular rapid.”
Hobbins, worried that he might hit Cahill with an oar, stopped rowing, lost
control of the boat, and drifted into a large hydraulic that ejected him, though
the empty boat remained upright. Cahill, clothed in rain gear, quick-dry long
underwear, and neoprene socks, began to frantically swim down the right side of
the rapid. “I was a swimmer for four years at the University of Wisconsin,” says
Cahill, who now believes that struggling may have made things worse. “In a
desperate water situation, I just swim.” Harry Butler, an engineer and kayaker
from Wisconsin who organized the trip, thinks Cahill swam roughly 250 yards.
“It was very beautiful inside the waterfall,” Cahill says. “There were round
circles and circles falling off of ovals. It’s really like being in an
underwater kaleidoscope.”
As Cahill swam, he occasionally inhaled big gulps of river water. At the bottom
of the rapid, he grabbed onto the stern of a kayak that helped pull him into an
eddy where two rafts were waiting. “The raft was in an eddy,” Cahill says. “I’m
holding onto the outside of the raft, and I see another raft coming toward me
driven by the current.” That would be an alarming sight: a fully loaded Grand
Canyon oar rig is typically 18 feet long and weighs at least 2,000 pounds.
“As I saw that thing coming for me, I ducked under and swam,” Cahill recalls.
“Here was my major mistake. The eddy is water coming back upstream. I tried to
swim under the boat, so I was swimming against the eddy current. I was
swallowing a lot of water, and I couldn’t get out from under it because I was
swimming the wrong way.”
When Cahill finally resurfaced, Rachel Butler and Justin Kleberg pulled him
aboard and rowed across the river to Tequila Beach, a sandy spot where groups
often celebrate successful runs through Lava Falls.
“That was when I caught up with him,” says Butler. “He was conscious at that
point—exhausted but fully coherent.”
Cahill remembers getting out of the raft and taking three steps up a crumbly
bank, sitting on a mound of sand, and being handed a celebratory beer. “I don’t
recall if I ever got that beer opened,” he says. At that point, without any
premonition or dizziness, he blacked out. “I saw no bright light, no beckoning
figures, no pearly gates,” Cahill says. “Just nothing.”
According to Butler, Cahill quickly stopped breathing and turned “blue, then
purple, then gray.” Justin Kleberg, a Wilderness EMT, along with Steve Smitts, a
registered nurse, immediately started working to save him, using chest
compressions and rescue breaths. Meanwhile, a team member, Ralph Lee, used a
satellite phone to call the Park Service.
Because the group was still deep inside the canyon, Lee had only about 30
seconds of reception, enough to give the dispatcher their coordinates and report
that they had an unresponsive person in their party. After about four minutes,
Dan Laham, another boater in the party, checked Cahill for a pulse and said he
could feel something. Cahill soon began breathing on his own and regained
consciousness.
“When I started coming to, I hadn’t even realized that I was out. Apparently I
said, ‘Stop poking me,’” says Cahill, who awoke to find his friends gathered
around him at close range, Kleberg having just finished with his chest
compressions.. “He was doing it right, because he busted all my ribs.”
Around this time, another satellite came into range over the canyon’s narrow
rim, which allowed a longer connection to the Park Service. In emergency
parlance, calling somebody unresponsive tends to mean they’ve died. So initially
the dispatcher thought there was no rush.
The odds of surviving a cardiac arrest in the field, with only CPR and rescue
breaths for resuscitation, are very low. This time, when Lee reported that
Cahill had regained consciousness, the Park Service scrambled a helicopter.
Forty minutes later, Cahill was on his way to Flagstaff Medical Center.
It’s hard to say exactly what caused Cahill to go into cardiac arrest, but cold
water, shock, exhaustion, and water inhalation could have been contributing
factors. Tests performed at the Heart and Vascular Center of Northern Arizona
showed only slightly elevated levels of troponin proteins and the enzyme
creatine kinase, which the heart muscles release into the bloodstream in great
quantities during an attack. Slightly elevated levels are consistent with
somebody who has had CPR performed but has not actually suffered a heart attack.
More likely, what caused Cahill’s heart to stop was a respiratory event. That
is, he probably drowned.
Though Cahill sustained several cracked ribs from CPR, he was in high spirits in
Death Valley. “It’s a good place to contemplate mortality and commit various
degrees of philosophy,” he says.
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