“We’re really at an infant stage in terms of our clinical ability to assess traumatic brain injury,” a medical expert said.
Before he ended his life, Ryan Larkin made his family promise to donate his brain to science.
The 29-year-old Navy SEAL was convinced years of exposure to blasts had badly damaged his brain, despite doctors telling him otherwise. He had downloaded dozens of research papers on traumatic brain injury out of frustration that no one was taking him seriously, his father said.
“He knew,” Frank Larkin said. “I’ve grown to understand that he was out to prove that he was hurt, and he wasn’t crazy.”
In 2017, a postmortem study found that Ryan Larkin, a combat medic and instructor who taught SEALs how to breach buildings with explosives, had a pattern of brain scarring unique to service members who’ve endured repeated explosions.
I guess it’s just very difficult for the doctor if their interpretation of the evidence says that you are ok. They must choose whether to believe their patient, or to trust in their own knowledge and training. In your case, the doctor made the wrong decision and it almost cost you your life. And in other cases people definitely do die due to mistakes made by doctors. … or at least, the people would not have died if the mistake wasn’t make - that doesn’t always mean it was the doctor’s fault though. People are imperfect - especially when under pressure; and sometimes the strategies that save lives are the same strategies that let other people down.
I’m reminded of a TV series that I enjoyed, called “This is going to hurt”.