I'll give y'all the punchline to this question later, but I submitted something in writing in which I guessed the following:
If someone on a ventilator had it shut off, then injected with an overdose with adrenaline, it would be a pretty miserable death. Seems like it would combine both suffocation and the feeling of your heart getting ready to explode.
Am I off the mark? If so, by how much?
Posted by Trisha the Severe Hottie (Member # 6000) on :
I think that if I were aware enough to realize I couldn't breath, my body would probably produce its own rush of adrenaline.
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
Trisha,
this isn't really hypothetical. I was reacting to a specific scenario presented to me.
Posted by Trisha the Severe Hottie (Member # 6000) on :
Right, well the reason my body would release adrenaline is it has an anti-constriction effect on the bronchials. I wasn't trying to be flippant.
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
OK,
but it looks like I might not be far off the mark. I just found a list of symptoms associated with massive overdoses of adrenaline:
Seizure /convulsion Weight loss Muscle Weakness Cardiomyopathy Cyanosis Somnolence Over excitement Dyspnea Arrhythmias Death
Posted by Trisha the Severe Hottie (Member # 6000) on :
I know my mother in law takes adrenaline when she has anaphylactic shock- which happens surprisingly often.
It sounds as though this would be a scenario where having decided to allow death the practitioners take measures to ensure it? That sounds like some of the procedures surrounding abortion. Which are not supposed to apply to live people. Unless they want to create an ethic of regarding those who have had ventilator/life support withdrawn as being legally like the unborn. Being pro-life I find that really disturbing.
I guess people can thing it is better than the lingering death of dehydration/starvation that would otherwise follow. But opiates can block out that pain, whereas I think adrenaline could bring somone back to consciousness. Anyway, it sounds criminal to me. If the ending of ventilator was intended as a measure to allow death.
edit: forgot the word withdrawn
[ January 11, 2005, 03:56 PM: Message edited by: Trisha the Severe Hottie ]
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
Related thread can be found here, but even telling you that much may qualify as a "spoiler." That's the only real "spoiler" contained in the thread so far, though.
Posted by Trisha the Severe Hottie (Member # 6000) on :
It is sad that we don't have sigs. But they do at galacticcactus. :whispers: One of us, one of us, one of us...
Posted by Trisha the Severe Hottie (Member # 6000) on :
Okay, having read your other thread, I'll say that I was assuming something more like an unconscious person who had left a directive that their ventilator be turned off, and then they find themselves going through this experience.